


History Has It's Eyes on You

by NomadicSecret



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Punisher (TV 2017), Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Families of Choice, Multi, Slow Burn, Tags Are Hard, Time Shenanigans, Women Being Awesome, but also time travel sooo...., characters tagged in order of appearance not importance, lots of friendship - Freeform, ships are mostly background, two brief instances of non-graphic threatened/attempted non-con, violence level is somewhere between the MCU and Daredevil/Punisher
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-20
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:27:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 95,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26018011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NomadicSecret/pseuds/NomadicSecret
Summary: History professor Lucy Preston was hired to bring Steve Rogers up to date on what he missed while he was in the ice. She's drawn deeper into SHIELD after Frank Castle steals the time machine Tony Stark built. But Castle says that her real enemy is all around them, and he might not be wrong.You don't need to know Timeless to enjoy this fic, which is largely complete (still editing) and will be updated every Saturday.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Maria Castle, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Lucy Preston & Felicity Smoak, Lucy Preston & Sam Wilson, Lucy Preston/Frank Castle, Lucy Preston/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson
Comments: 20
Kudos: 19





	1. I'm not standing still I am lying in wait

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this mostly during quarantine/temporary layoff. It is finished and will not be abandoned. I’m back to work now and still editing. Update might go up to twice/week, we'll see. I have an amazing friend who has been beta-reading the first few chapters but this posting schedule will probably outstrip her time for this project, so if anyone else is interested let me know. I'm not worried about copy-editing, just smoothing out the character arcs and making sure that everything makes sense outside my head.
> 
> There are a lot of characters and Easter eggs here. I pull mainly from the MCU, Agents of SHIELD and Marvel Netflix shows (especially The Punisher), with some other stuff mixed in. Lucy and her mom are sort of borrowed from Timeless but are not intended as faithful/canonical versions. I took a lot of liberties there.

April 2016, Timeline 1

Lucy unlocked her office door for maybe the final time. It was so small she had to climb over the guest chair to get around her desk and into her seat, but it was hers alone and that still gave her a little thrill. She flipped on the fan and left the door open, the windowless room stifling in the New York early summer, and looked around. All of her grading had been submitted and handed back as of yesterday, and she’d been emptying the office of books gradually, so most of those were gone. She had the ones she had assigned to her American History 1776-1865 survey course, a notebook, a sweater left-over from the winter, when her coffee had iced over several times a week, and a few personal effects. She picked up the framed photo of her thirteen year old self (all arms and legs, the only six months of her life she had ever been tall), her two favourite uncles, and her brother Foggy, beaming at the camera as wide as he could to show off his missing two front teeth. They were surrounded by sand and desert camouflage, and Lucy could practically feel the wind on her face. She ought to swap it out, she decided, for her next office. Replace it with one of Foggy and his best friend Matt at graduation. Nowadays, Matt was the closest thing to family they had, aside from each other.

“Lucy Preston?”

Lucy put the picture into her box.

“Yes, I’m Dr. Preston,” she said, scooting around the desk with as much dignity as she could muster. “Come in and sit down.”

The man who walked in was very obviously not a student who had gotten lost in the warren of history department offices. He dominated her cramped office, sauntering in dressed in head to toe black, including the eyepatch and full length trenchcoat. He closed the door behind him and sat, eyeing her desk like he was thinking about putting his boots on it.

“What can I help you with?”

“I’m Director Fury of SHIELD.” He sat, leaning back as far as he could in the chair. “You haven’t lined up a job yet for next year,” he said.

“I thought I might take some time off, travel a bit,” she lied. She’d been freaking out for weeks about the lack of job prospects. Why had she thought getting a PhD in the history and anthropology of American political movements had been a good idea, again? Everyone had always told her how bright she was, how diligent, how insightful, but when it came down to brass tacks, she hadn’t heard back from a single application. Foggy’s scholarship at Columbia wouldn’t be negatively impacted by her not being invited back, but she’d hoped to stay nearby. Maybe it was normal for college-aged siblings to spread out, but he was all the family she really had left and she knew that she was overprotective.

“In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that I had something to do with that,” he said.

So the American intelligence community wasn’t done messing with her life yet. Shocker.

“Full disclosure?” she scoffed.

He smiled at that. “Hear me out, and if you still want to teach hungover nineteen year olds, I’ll make a call. Stay here with your brother, get away from the memories - whatever you want.”

“What’s the pitch?”

“We need someone to teach American and world history from 1944 up to present.”

“At the Academy?”

“One on one.”

Lucy stared at him for a moment. American and world history, 1944-present. Why 1944? 1945-present – that was common. But 1944? SHIELD. One on one. She rotated the limited information she had in her mind, trying to figure out what the full picture was.

“The curriculum would include pop culture and everyday technological advancements, not just American political movements, but I have every faith in your abilities to prepare this man to live in the present day,” Fury continued blandly.

“You’re fucking with me,” Lucy decided, slipping unconsciously back into the speech patterns she’d picked up as an Army brat. “People trust information more when they have to work for it. My mother was a spy, Director Fury, you’ll have to do better than some half-assed bread crumbs suggesting that Captain America is back and somehow alive.”

“Do you want the job or not? There’s a rather thorough NDA.” Lucy stared at him, his face unreadable. Her gut was telling her that he wasn’t just messing with her, though. And if this was real – if there was even a chance that it was real-

Lucy coloured inside the lines. She looked both ways before crossing the street, she brushed her teeth three times a day, she had an emergency fund in the bank and paid off her credit card every month. She had a locker with a getaway bag and a safety deposit box under a fake name. She had three contingency plans and two exit routes at any given time, and she didn’t go looking for trouble.

She didn’t know how to turn her back on an adventure like this and still look at herself in the mirror, though.

“I’m not signing the contract yet. We’ll have to discuss the parameters of the job, and the salary.”

“I’ll have it couriered to your apartment,” Fury said, standing.

* * *

“This feels like a bad idea.”

“Are you speaking as a lawyer or a brother?” Lucy asked.

“I haven’t even finished law school, Lucy. I appreciate the confidence, but I sent this to one of the nicer lawyers I interned for last summer. There’s nothing wrong with the contract, but – super secret government man in black stuff is so not you. I mean, you’ve always been so skeptical of it all. And of historians working with government agencies.” Foggy pushed his hair out of his face.

“I’m not trading independence for access,” Lucy said. “I’ll be teaching.”

“You know that curiosity killed the cat, right?” he asked.

“And satisfaction brought it back.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have nine lives,” he reminded her. “Just – be careful, yeah? I don’t know if now is really the time to be making big life decisions.” He looked at her with the sad eyes that she hated, the sympathy that threatened to bring her grief flooding out of its carefully managed compartments in her mind.

“It’s an eight-month contract, Foggy, not a lifetime commitment. And I don’t have anything lined up. This keeps me here, and that’s – that’s important, right now.”

“Whatever you need, Luce. And on that note, want to go get drunk?” he said. “Are you allowed to do that? As a SHIELD employee?”

“Fuck off, Foggy,” she said, laughing. “I’m a contractor, not an employee. How’d you ever get accepted to Columbia?”

“Charm and good looks.”

“Well, say hi to Matt for me. I’m going to spend the night searching the internet for postwar American history syllabi and freaking out,” she said cheerfully.

* * *

She hesitated for a long moment outside the door, ignoring the silent judgement of the agent who’d escorted her through the facility. She’d changed her outfit four times this morning, trying to strike the right balance of competent and casual, familiar with 40s fashion but not pretending to be someone she wasn’t. She’d wiped off her favourite red lipstick and pulled her curled hair into a ponytail when she’d realised that she looked like she was trying to emulate Peggy Carter, which wasn’t entirely untrue. The spymistress had been one of her earliest heroines and definitely had an influence on Lucy’s fondness for vintage looks.

Despite everything, it was still a surprise to open the door and see Captain America sitting there. He stood immediately.

“At ease,” she said, with some amusement, and closed the door behind her. “Hi. I’m Dr Lucy Preston.” She reached to shake his hand, and found his grip firm but not crushing. A good first sign. “I’m happy to use first names, unless you prefer Captain Rogers?”

“No, just Steve would be fine. Better. Please,” he said, charmingly nervous in a way that put her at ease. The cynical part of her wondered if it was deliberate.

“This was kind of a big revelation and I got it less than twenty-four hours ago, so I’m not as prepared as I’d usually like to be,” she admitted.

“I know the feeling, ma’am.”

She chuckled and some of the tension broke. She sat across from him, spreading some notes out in front of her, and started with an explanation of her credentials. “My PhD is in the history and anthropology of American political movements, so I’ll probably use a more-or-less chronological look at politics as the backbone of our study, but we’ll be taking a more comprehensive look at society, culture, food, technology and whatever we feel like you need to know than most university courses. I want you to feel comfortable slowing me down or letting me know if something doesn’t seem important, or just telling me what you think. Honestly, one of the most exciting things about this job is that you didn’t organically experience any of this and you don’t have the cultural knowledge of it to bias your reaction. I think it’ll be a really valuable reminder to question the assumptions that I make.”

“That’s a really nice way to say I don’t know anything, ma’am,” he said, a sort of sheepish smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

She smiled back but continued. “One thing you might notice is that the prevailing theory of history when you were in school would have been what’s called Great Man Theory, the idea that it’s individual people, usually rich, usually white, usually men, who determine the course of history, which is mostly about politics and the military, maybe the economy. There’s been a movement – well, a number of movements – throughout the second half of the twentieth century to round out the picture, to tell the stories of historically underrepresented groups – the working class, people of colour, women – and explore what that says about the time you’re looking at and the ways in which they drove or impeded change. It’s kind of like – did you see _The Wizard of Oz_?”

“Three times, ma’am.”

“So you know how Kansas is just in shades of brown, and then she steps into Oz and the screen is a riot of colour? That’s kind of how I think of it. It’s not that politics stops being important – I just finished my PhD in it, so obviously I don’t think so – or that history would be exactly the same if you snatched George Washington out of the Revolution. It’s just a fuller way of looking at the past. I have a colleague who studies fashion history, and looks at how clothes shaped and were shaped by what was happening.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s – I’m glad that more people are having their stories told,” he said. “I always felt like Peg didn’t get enough credit, you know? Or the Commandos. It was easier to tell the story of me. Or – what they wanted me to be.”

“That’s another thing I wanted to talk about before we got started,” Lucy said. “So, some people think that my job is to find out what happened and tell people, and that’s sort of true but not a very nuanced way to see it. Any time we tell a story, we’re leaving things out – because we don’t notice, don’t think they’re important, we don’t think they’re relevant and they’re going to confuse the story, or because we don’t think they’re appropriate for the audience – you would tell me a story of a battle differently, I suspect, than you would tell it to another soldier. There would be things you censored for me and other things you had to explain that you would just assume that a soldier would know. And if you and I were in a firefight together, I think the way we would tell that story would be very different, even if we were both telling the truth about what we experienced. The things that struck me most might be background noise to you, and I might be overwhelmed and not able to remember details that you would. Right?”

“Yes, ma’am.” God, she hated that, but she could feel how careful and polite he was being, and she thought it was best to let him get comfortable with her.

“And then, of course, there are people who aren’t trying to tell the truth. They might want to tell a larger truth, or they might be willing to lie to get what they want. I think that’s one lesson you’re going to learn a lot quicker than my usual students.”

“I can imagine,” he admitted ruefully. “It was bad enough when I was standing right there.”

“I’m going to do my best to be conscious of my biases and to present you with sources that have different perspectives, but I wanted to put that on the table for you and encourage you to ask questions or challenge me if you disagree with how I see things.”

He nodded again. “I understand, ma’am.” He started to speak and cut himself off.

“What is it?” she asked.

He hesitated again. “It’s sort of rude,” he admitted.

“Ask away,” Lucy said. “I want to make sure that you get a teacher you’re comfortable with.”

“Why did they ask you to do this job?” he asked.

“It’s a good question.” She sighed and leaned back in her chair. “I’ve thought a lot about it in the last day. From what I know, Fury isn’t someone who does anything for just one reason, and I’ve come up with four but I don’t know which is operative.”

He nodded encouragingly as she tried to figure out how to phrase this.

“I was an Army brat, so I know more about the military world and the intelligence world than most historians. And my parents….” How to phrase this. She usually just lied, but she didn’t want to start things off like that. “I haven’t had a lot of contact with my father since he went to prison, but my mother kept working for the CIA until the cancer got too bad, so I’m sure they kept a pretty close eye on us. A lot of the security clearance legwork would have been done already.”

Even so, she’d been shocked by how little she’d had to do to apply, and how quickly it had turned around. Her badge was still temporary this morning, but she was in a SHIELD office with Captain America within 24 hours of being invited to apply for the job. She didn’t know if it was a power move on Fury’s part – I don’t need to investigate you because I already know everything – or just the eccentricity SHIELD was known for. No other US intel agency would have promoted someone who dressed like him to Director.

“There are a lot of history professors in this country, even the city, and most of them are more qualified than me,” she admitted. “If the qualifications are professional. But most of them aren’t conventionally attractive twenty-something female brunettes.”

“The nurse when I woke up fit a profile,” he admitted.

“It’s cynical, but that’s my instinct.”

“You said there were four reasons,” he reminded her.

She picked up her pen, clicked the nib back in and then out again, unable to meet his eyes. Finally she pulled the ring on a chain out from under her shirt. “My fiancé died a couple of months ago,” she admitted. “So the more generous interpretation is – maybe I understand, a little bit, what you’re feeling. It’s not on the same scale, of course-”

“Grief isn’t a competition,” he said quickly, kindly.

“Thank you,” she said. “Anyway, that’s the second reason that I took it. I have no idea what you’re going through, obviously, but I have felt alone. And I’ve grieved. I’ve felt-,” she remembered the day her father had been arrested, how they’d packed up and moved off-base in a matter of hours, how the men who had smiled and hidden sweets for her were suddenly stone-faced. “-like my whole world was gone in an instant. And if Fury or whoever decided I was the one is going to keep throwing Peggy Carter lookalikes at you like women are interchangeable-” she shrugged. “I promise I won’t get ideas. But if you’d feel more comfortable with someone more experienced, or more focussed on post-WWII, or more widely published, I won’t take offense.”

“Ma’am, I think this is the most comfortable I’ve felt since I woke up here.”

She ducked her head, the matter of fact praise bringing a flush to her cheeks. “Do you want to look over the reading list for the next few weeks?” she asked, handing over his copy.

* * *

Steve was a dream student. He was both curious and thoughtful, always doing his reading and never without an opinion, even when it was conflicted. He challenged her and the histories they engaged with. She retooled her plans, added to the reading list, and when she found out that he hadn’t been outside since the day he’d woken up, started taking him on field trips. They started with museums, of course, and then art galleries. She couldn’t care less about modern art but Steve was fascinated with how art had evolved and he’d research it and explain it to her as they walked around. It was a nice role reversal for both of them. They went to Mets games after Steve declared that he could never cheer for the Yankees, and to a political protest. She had to beg him to keep a low profile because she’d gotten signoff to take him to museums but his return from the ‘dead’ was still a secret and Fury could definitely rendition her if she blew it for SHIELD.

She kept him away from her apartment and the nearby spots favoured by both her and Foggy. Steve passed in public because no one was expecting to see Captain America walking around alive. Sometimes people got a look like they were trying to place him, but it was a point of pride for New Yorkers to be above noticing things like that, so no one tried too hard. But Foggy? After her teenage Peggy Carter fangirl phase he’d better recognise Steve, especially since he knew that she was teaching for SHIELD and it was very hush-hush. And Foggy of course knew about Steve-from-work, a vet who had recently moved back to the city, was an orphan who had lost his girlfriend and best friend within a few days, and liked art and baseball. He definitely thought Steve-from-work had a thing for her that she was oblivious to, but she didn’t really have an explanation for why Foggy wasn’t invited to anything other than “he’s shy” so she couldn’t do much to dispel that. It also made Foggy happy, to think that she might be moving toward moving on.

It was a night in with Foggy, who had his hands full making dessert, so Lucy buzzed the delivery guy in and got the door when they knocked.

“Hi,” she said, brought up short when it was Steve instead. “Ummm-” she glanced back at the kitchen area of the common space. “What’s up?” she stepped into the hall and pulled the door closed behind her.

Steve’s face fell. “Nothing, I was just out for a walk – I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Wait,” Lucy said, reaching out as he backed away. “It’s just that Foggy’s in there. Seriously, what’s going on?”

“I don’t know. Nothing. It was just like – the walls were closing in, kinda? I just needed to get out. Which I did, so it’s fine.”

She made a snap decision. “You want to come in? Foggy’s making brownies, we’re going to hang out and watch _Inherit the Wind_ for the zillionth time.”

“You don’t want me in there,” Steve said kindly. “And that’s okay. I get that it’s your job to be nice to me, Lucy. I shouldn’t have taken advantage.”

“Okay, this is stupid. Move, soldier,” she ordered, pointing at the door. He stared her down. She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, adding a foot tap when she saw him flinch.

“Fine,” he grumbled, walking past her into the apartment.

“Foggy, Steve-from-work is going to be joining us,” she called.

“Are you dating Steve-from-work?” Foggy asked gleefully. “Is this meeting the boyfriend? Wait – did you think I would judge you?” He turned around, frowning.

And dropped the bowl full of brownie batter.

“Steve-from-work is here already, not on his way,” Lucy clarified with amusement.

“Lucy,” Foggy said, but let it hang.

“Fog?” she prompted.

“Am I going crazy?” he asked.

“No, honey.”

“Is SHIELD involved in any kind of ethically dubious cloning shit?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Okay. Okay. This is fine. Okay. We’re probably going to need more food, aren’t we?”

Lucy looked sideways at Steve, who was holding himself as awkwardly as the first day they’d met. “We’ll get pizza,” she decided. “And the Thai can just be an appetizer.” She pulled out her phone.

“Aw, brownies,” Foggy said, looking down at the floor.

“Can I help clean up?” Steve asked. Foggy looked at Lucy, who nodded.

“Sure, man,” Foggy said, reaching for something to wipe it up with. After that, Foggy was okay, and only stared at Steve because he ate two extra-large pizzas by himself.

Steve spent nearly as much time at the apartment as Lucy, after that, and yet the list Foggy started of things to watch Steve watching only got longer and longer.


	2. I'm about to change your life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “If Castle succeeds in changing the timeline, our reality changes,” Rhodes explained quietly. “We could be dead. We could never be born.”

There was no buzz, just a loud, forceful knock on the door.

“Expecting someone?” Steve asked with a frown.

“Too soon for the Chinese,” said Lucy. Had Foggy lost his keys? Or been mugged? He was late, and not answering texts. She refused to consider the possibility of a notification. She answered the door, pulling her sweater tighter around her. “Yes?” she said, heart still in her throat.

“Dr Preston, you need to come with us.”

“And who are you?”

“Sorry, ma’am,” said the harried-looking young man. “I’m Agent Davis, from SHIELD. We, uh – there was an incident, and Deputy Director Hill sent me to get you.”

Steve handed Lucy her sneakers, putting his own on.

“Uh, sir, you aren’t needed on this one,” Davis said.

Lucy and Steve looked at one another. “I’m sorry?” she said.

“DD Hill just asked me to bring Dr. Preston.”

“Well, I’m coming,” Steve said, throwing a look at Lucy. The SHIELD agent obviously recognised him and wasn’t about to tell Captain America where he could or couldn’t go.

She nodded and grabbed her keys.

Davis walked them out and put them in the back of the SUV waiting there. “Any chance you can tell us what this is about?”

“Honestly, ma’am, I don’t even know,” he admitted sheepishly. “But whatever it is has people pretty worked up. And I’m not talking about people who spook easy, you know?”

“I do.” She wondered what the hell kind of emergency had SHIELD asking for her, not Steve. And the Deputy Director? Sure, Fury had dropped in to recruit her for Steve, but he was known to be eccentric and that was a freaking American hero rising from the dead.

They didn’t go to a SHIELD facility, though. The SUV pulled into Stark Tower, and she exchanged a look with Steve, had to hand off their electronics (Steve had forgotten his at the house, and was definitely going to get it back with a bunch of personalised ringtones and creatively nicknamed contacts after Foggy got his hands on it) and clear security.

“Dr. Preston,” said the slim, dark-haired white woman who greeted them. “You have quite the reputation.”

“I’m one year out of getting my PhD, Deputy Director Hill. Respectfully, can we please cut the shit?”

“Captain America seems to have taken a shine to you. Rogers, I don’t recall inviting you to this party.”

“He’s my plus one,” Lucy quipped.

Hill looked unimpressed. “We’re on the clock. Follow me.”

The workshop was enormous, a warehouse-like space with a series of computer stations at the near end. At the far end was a large metallic orb, and the space was scattered with SHIELD personnel and a few nervous-looking people Lucy had to assume were Stark employees. Hill pointed to the nearest screen. The left half was a service photo of a man with a Marine haircut. He was big – 6’4’’ and 240 lbs, apparently, which put him about on par with Steve. Presumably he didn’t have superpowers, or Steve would have been invited.

“Frank Castle,” Hill said. “Born 1985. Former Marine Scout Sniper, seconded to the CIA for a while. He killed his wife and child a year ago and dropped off the grid. We thought he was in Mexico, but apparently not. We haven’t been able to identify his pilot, hostage, or co-conspirators.” Video played on the right of the five men, four of them dressed in some kind of repairman uniform. Besides Frank, one wore a hoodie pulled up to obscure his face, one had a bag over his head and his hands tied, one was black, one white. They got into a round, futuristic-looking thing, which subsequently disappeared. They obviously knew where the cameras were, avoiding a good shot of their faces, but Castle looked straight at the camera, like he was taunting them, black hair grown out from the military high and tight haircut, and a full hipster/fugitive beard.

“Pilot? What the hell was that?” Lucy asked. And what did it have to do with a history professor, let alone her? She knew why she’d been chosen to tutor Steve, but for God’s sakes, she didn’t even have tenure. Honestly, there were a number of active warzones she’d prefer to standing in Stark Tower.

“Ever heard of a closed time-like curve?”

Lucy turned. Tony Stark was the speaker, walking up behind her in a ratty Metallica t-shirt and jeans covered in oil stains. Her hands clenched into fists enough for the nails digging into her palm to give her something to ground herself. She imagined locking her personal feelings in a safe. She just had to get through this, whatever it was.

“Of course you haven’t, you’re a humanities prof,” he continued.

“Tony,” scolded the uniformed Air Force Colonel at his shoulder.

Stark looked everywhere but at Steve. “Captain,” he said curtly.

“Mr. Stark,” Steve replied.

“Hello, Colonel,” Lucy said, extending her hand to shake.

“Call me Rhodey, everyone does,” he said with an easy smile.

“Just Lucy’s fine,” she replied.

“How did you know he’s a Colonel?” Stark asked.

“You like research as much as safety protocols, I see,” Lucy said. And she really hadn’t meant to say that. Steve was giving her a look because oh yeah, they’d never talked about exactly how her fiancé died. He didn’t know that Grant had been a test pilot for Stark, or that Lucy hadn’t gotten anything back to bury. Honestly, she wasn’t sure Steve knew his name. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him or that she’d set out to keep it a secret, but loose talk of information and feelings hadn’t exactly been encouraged in her childhood and she’d always been terrible at opening up. It was the reason cited for every breakup she’d ever been on the receiving end of. Whoops.

“Closed time-like curve?” Hill reminded Stark, who was peering at Lucy like she was a dog who had started speaking. Steve edged closer to Lucy, folding his arms to make his biceps appear even larger.

Stark grabbed a piece of paper off the desk with a dramatic sigh. “Say this is the fabric of space-time. If you get a powerful enough gravitational field, you could actually bend it back on itself, creating a kind of loop that would allow you to cross over to an earlier point.”

“Time travel?” Lucy said in disbelief.

“Yes, Mr. Stark built a time machine. And he didn’t tell the government about it.” Hill’s tone was withering.

Time travel was real. Time travel. Time travel was a thing now, and not just in a frozen-in-the-ice kind of way. Lucy’s life had never really been normal, but this was just ridiculous.

“How’s that working out?” Steve asked.

“How’d trusting the government go for you?” shot back Stark. “You might have missed a few things. You know, doing time as a Capsicle. Watergate. Iran Contra. Weapons of mass destruction.”

“I mean, I also kind of don’t want the government to know about this. I don’t want anyone to know about this. Can we break it? Send the minion agents out for a hammer, some kerosene and one of those mind wipe _Men in Black_ things?” Lucy suggested, mostly joking, feeling hysteria rise. Because this conversation had begun with a criminal who was a highly capable soldier.

“See? Cap’s _historian_ girlfriend agrees that the government can’t be trusted to keep secrets and use their power responsibly.”

“Oh, but rich people and corporations do _so_ much better,” Lucy snapped. “Demonstrably.”

Rhodes snorted. Steve was fuming.

“So,” Lucy said slowly, turning away from Stark with some effort. “Frank Castle has stolen the time machine and you want me to what, brief your agents on whatever you think they’re going back to do?” She really hoped that it was something that she’d actually, you know, _studied_ and not just another case of SHIELD assuming that she knew everything about American history.

Stark and Hill both looked at her in surprise.

“It wasn’t a huge leap,” she said dryly. “Assuming the information I’m being given is all related.”

“Close,” Hill said. “But we don’t have time for a briefing.”

“We’re talking about time travel,” Lucy pointed out.

“If Castle succeeds in changing the timeline, our reality changes,” Rhodes explained quietly. “We could be dead. We could never be born.”

That still didn’t make total sense to Lucy.

“When he leaves this timeline, does he create a new one? A multiverse? Or is just the one? How do we measure the passage of time he’s spent there – if we disappear when he changes history, hasn’t it already happened? And if Stark is never born and can’t invent the time machine, would the one in existence still work? Would it disappear and strand Castle in the past? Or would the paradox just – nuke the timeline?” Lucy wondered. Sci-fi wasn’t the primary direction her nerdom manifested and physics certainly wasn’t, but she knew there were different theories. What were they dealing with? Did they even know?

“Two time machines,” Stark interrupted, sidestepping her questions. “I invented two time machines.” He gestured at the back of the warehouse. There was indeed a second round whirligig, smaller and less shiny-looking than the first. “We call that one the Lifeboat. Their CPUs are linked, so that we can find them.”

“3:30 pm May 6, 1937,” Hill said.

“1937,” Lucy repeated, her stomach turning to lead. What if they were interfering with the Nazis, making them more lethal – weapons help, or-

“Manchester, New Jersey.”

Lucy felt almost weak-kneed with relief. Any change in the timeline could be catastrophic, of course, but a timeline where the Nazis won the war was up among the worst.

New Jersey, 1937. “The Hindenburg,” she said. “I think-” her phone had been confiscated. “I think that’s the day it crashed.”

Stark had a translucent device barely recognisable as a tablet in his hand. “Four hours,” he confirmed.

“You can go anywhere – anywhen and you go to the Hindenburg,” Lucy said, looking at the picture on the screen of the former Marine. “Why?”

“If Castle kills people in 1937 who aren’t supposed to die-” Rhodes reminded her.

“Did you ever stop to think that maybe some things are too dangerous to exist?” Steve demanded of Stark.

“I didn’t count on this happening,” Stark said, shifting from foot to foot.

“No, you were just too reckless to consider the possibility.”

“What you call ‘reckless’, I call ‘science’,” Stark shot back. “Some of us actually move the human race forward instead of just punching things or reading books.”

“There’s room in there for three passengers.” Hill cut in before things got out of hand. Lucy turned and saw her gesturing at her, Stark, and Rhodes.

“You can’t be serious,” she said.

“Ma’am!” Steve squawked.

“It’s impossible to predict everything they’ll need to know. You know how people dress, talk, the players. If things change in small ways, you’ll know how to get them back on track. Preston, your country needs you. The _world_ needs you.” Lucy opened her mouth to argue, but Steve beat her to it.

“She isn’t a soldier. She’s got no training, no combat experience, and you want to send her into the past to stop a terrorist who murdered his family from doing God-knows-what?”

“Fuck,” Lucy snarled, realising she was absolutely going to get into that rustbucket and travel back through time to go up against _terrorists_. With _Stark_. Her father would have a cow. Her mother wouldn’t believe that they’d chosen Lucy. Foggy would cry. “I need my phone,” she said. “And something to wear.”

“Lucy-” Steve protested. And honestly, they’d known each other for six months, he should know by now that arguing with Hill on her behalf was the worst way to stop her from going.

“No one is qualified for this, Steve. If I can help, I’m going to. But I’d rather not walk into this angry at you.” She looked him in the eye, hoping that he would realise quickly that she was as stubborn as he was.

He sighed. “I’m going with her.”

“What if you run into someone who knows you?” Rhodes asked.

Steve held his arms out and looked down at himself. “My own mother wouldn’t recognise me,” he said, then turned away, hiding his face from Stark and Rhodes. His mother would still be alive in ‘37, Lucy realised. Bucky would be there, in Brooklyn. Friends, bullies. His whole world. She fought the instinct to comfort him. It would look like weakness, to Stark. She didn’t understand what was going on there, but she didn’t think Steve would thank her for that.

Her phone was brought to her, facility rules be damned, and she opened a text to Foggy. She hesitated, and then just typed _I love you_. She thought about more, but she didn’t want to scare him to death if everything turned out fine. And no one had to spell out that this was top-secret.

“There’s only three seats,” Hill reminded them.

“I’m not going if Rhodey doesn’t go,” Stark said immediately.

“Fine by me,” Steve grumbled.

“If I don’t go, the Lifeboat won’t go. I’m the pilot, Capsicle. I would think you might remember what happens without one.”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Steve asked.

“Funny things are.” Stark shrugged, then raised his voice. “Pack it up, everyone!” The nearby workers glanced over and then went back to work, seemingly inured to the dramatics.

“You can’t really be this selfish,” Steve snarled. “If you don’t get everything you want, you just take your ball and go home?”

“I could say the same to you, Cap,” Stark said, indicating Lucy.

“Stop.” She said. “Steve, I wasn’t asking for your permission. Knock it off. Both of you.” She wanted to scream at Steve that he wasn’t the one who got to be mad at Stark, but she wasn’t ready to have that conversation.

“We’ve got clothes,” Hill said, turning back from a SHIELD minion. “This way.”

When she walked out of the room they’d given her to change in Colonel Rhodes was nearby, no longer in uniform.

“This is all wrong. This skirt is from the 40s and this blouse? They didn’t have this fabric back then. Or underwire bras.”

“Best we could do on short notice,” Hill said.

“I won’t let anyone see your bra,” Rhodes assured her.

“Unless you’re offering,” Stark said, waggling his eyebrows.

Lucy gave him the most withering look she could summon and resisted the urge to check where Steve was because he’d probably deck Stark for that kind of talk.

“Tony,” Rhodes said, firm.

“Colonel Rhodes, you’re going to want to be very careful,” she began.

“I know, ma’am. I’m black. Don’t have to be a historian to know there’s literally no place in American history that’s going to be awesome for me.”

“Here’s some money.” Hill handed over a stack of cash to Lucy. “Stark has no idea what money actually means and like you said, Rhodes isn’t going to want to look like he’s in charge.”

“Verify control systems,” said someone.

“Off you go,” Hill said.

Now? Right now? Lucy had been hoping for some time to cram. This was like a nightmare about failing to study for a life-and-death exam.

“Be careful,” Steve said, appearing by the stairs.

“If this is an elaborate prank I won’t even be mad,” she said. Rhodes, right behind her, chuckled. “Steve, if something does happen to me, you’ll look out for Foggy?” She handed him her phone.

He looked like he was in physical pain. “I promise.”

“Don’t be noticed. Are you listening, Stark? I’m talking to you. Don’t change anything,” Hill said.

The space was cramped and lit mostly by the array of different coloured flashing lights. Stark was in his seat already, back to them, flipping switches and hitting buttons. The two seats for herself and Colonel Rhodes put them knee to knee, and came with a terrifyingly comprehensive series of seat belts. She watched Rhodes as he buckled his up, and he slowed down when he saw her trying to follow along. She liked him already, even if he had a clear familiarity and friendship with Stark and that seemed to put them on opposite sides of the battle lines.

“Are you okay?” Rhodes asked.

“I’ll be fine,” she promised.

“You look terrified,” he said, non-judgemental about it.

“I am terrified. Aren’t you terrified? I really think we should all be terrified." She took a deep breath. "As soon as I have something to do, I’ll be better. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I am actually good under pressure.” She always kept it together under acute stress. It was almost like things slowed down, became clearer. She’d been like that as long as she could remember, cool and rational in an emergency or an argument. It was the long drawn out stresses that got to her, the uncertainty of what would happen every time she was in a room with her mother, the struggle for tenure, the stupid unimportant little details of everyday life.

“My hair’s all wrong,” she blurted out. The curl in it was the kind that came from modern curling irons.

Stark snorted. “Typical,” he said.

“It’s not period-appropriate,” she said, anger spiking and making her feel more in control.

“Hold on,” Stark said.

The Lifeboat rattled and the sense of pressure built and built until there was a sharp jerk and the sensation of being _squeezed_ , and then they settled. Lucy unclipped her seatbelt as quickly as she could and lurched for the door, getting it open and emptying her stomach contents clear of the machine. Blessedly, her hat held her hair out of the way and there wasn’t that much in her stomach, but she still felt clammy and generally humiliated as she scrambled and slipped down the side of the Lifeboat.

“G forces,” Rhodes said. “Tony and I have some experience, but nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Thanks,” she said, wishing for water to rinse out her mouth.

“Did we make it?” he asked, looking around at the trees. Having turned to look at him, she had a clear line of sight in the opposite direction. Stark was babbling about how dare Rhodey doubt him and Rhodes was winding him up, one eye on Lucy, stalling to give her a Stark-commentary-free moment to recover.

“Are you sure?”

”Pretty sure, “ Lucy said. They turned and followed her gaze to the Hindenburg, hanging there in the sky in all its steampunk glory.

They locked up the Lifeboat and left it in the woods, found a road and followed it toward town.

“So you never explained,” Rhodes said. “Why we can’t just go back to five minutes before Castle stormed in and shoot him?”

“Meeting yourself is a bad idea.” Stark said. “Sadly. Can you imagine? The opportunity to meet someone else this attractive? Can you say ‘threesome’?” He leered at Lucy again, who stopped walking and glared.

“I am trying to do a job here, and it is important. Quit being a creep. It’s not eccentrically charming. It’s actually a little threatening.”

“He would never-” Rhodes started.

“Yeah, does every waitress and secretary and maid he’s ever hit on know that? Did everyone who slept with him whose livelihood depended on him do it knowing, for sure, that he _would never_? Cause I don’t work for you,” she said refocussing on Stark, “But I know that when we get back you could pick up the phone and make sure that I never work again.” She started walking again.

“I have never-” Stark began, the two men following her.

“But you could.”

“What is your problem with me?”

Lucy huffed out a humourless laugh.

“What did _Captain America_ say about me?” he demanded.

“I don’t know what your problem is with each other, but you were both assholes back there and I do not need your shit right now. I’m not just Captain America’s friend, I’m your temporary co-worker. Can we please just do the job?” She glossed over her feelings on purpose – now was _not_ the time to unpack that– then heard a motor and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, good. These shoes are terrible.”

* * *

They got off in town. “Back of the bus was cool,” Rhodes said. Lucy just looked around, in awe of the immersion in a period she’d studied so thoroughly. Rhodes prodded her out of it and back to the mission, and she explained to the men that the Hindenburg wouldn’t be able to land on schedule due to the weather, and how the accident would take place, the spark of electricity that would kill 36 of the 97 people on board.

“First step is to find him,” Rhodes said. “We know the target.”

“Is he in charge?” Stark asked Lucy, pointing to a man wearing a uniform.

“How should I know? I haven’t memorised the picture of every moderately significant person who’s ever lived!”

“What do we do?” Rhodes asked.

“Crazy thought; let’s just ask him,” Lucy said with a sigh.

Rhodes looked sideways at Stark. “She does the talking,” he said.

“Excuse me, sir? Are you in charge here?” she asked.

“Yes, I’m Commander Rosendahl. Young lady, you’re very welcome to watch the landing, but I’m rather busy-” Yeah. He looked _really_ busy, Lucy thought uncharitably, standing next to a car alone.

“I’m so sorry to bother you, sir, but it’s very important. We’re looking for this man,” she said, producing the photograph. “He’s – um, he’s my husband. He’s very disturbed, that’s why he’s dressed so strangely. He’s due to have a lobotomy from Dr. Freeman when he comes to town. He escaped, and he could be a danger to himself or others. He was very interested in the Hindenburg, and I thought he might come here, maybe even try to get hired as ground crew. Please, sir, I thought he might finally come home to me and the children, and if we lose him now-” She broke off, covering her face with a hand, and Stark put an arm around her.

“My dear, I’ll help however I can. You there!” The Commander called to one of his men. “May we have this photograph?” he asked gently.

“Yes, certainly,” she agreed, and he gave it to the man with orders to check the crew and crowd.

“You wait here with your-?”

“Brother,” Lucy supplied quickly, smiling at Stark as she tried to come up with a cover for Rhodes. Then she realised that he didn’t need one. The Admiral would assume that he was an employee and might even think it odd if she introduced him as an equal. He hurried off with the men.

“Let’s split up,” Rhodes said. “If you find him, don’t engage him. If you find him, come find me. Promise, Tony?”

“Ehn.” Stark made a noncommittal noise.

“I’m serious, Tony.” They split up, and Lucy scanned the crowd. She checked her watch. How much time did they have? None – less than none. The time of the explosion clicked past. She looked up at the ship and then around at the crewmen bringing her down. They were coiling the ropes, keeping them off the wet ground. One of the theories of the Hindenburg explosion involved the lines dragging over the wet ground.

“Castle,” she said.

“Lucy.”

She whirled, her heart in her throat. That wasn’t Stark or Rhodes. And she was right, it was Castle, hands in his jacket pockets. She eyed them – he probably had a gun on her – but then she got distracted.

“How do you know my name?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the next draw on Timeless 1x01 “Pilot”.
> 
> It's been a long time since I posted anything and I forgot how nervewracking it is! Feel free to ask questions, speculate about what's coming, or share your feedback. I would love to hear your favourite lines or constructive criticism about what's not working for you. Just be kind, please.


	3. He has something to prove, he has nothing to lose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I would never work with someone who murdered his own family,” Lucy said firmly.  
> Rage and grief twisted his features and she wondered if he’d take her somewhere else to kill her or if she’d just doomed witnesses.

_Previously_

_“Let’s split up,” Rhodes said. “If you find him, don’t engage him. If you find him, come find me. Promise, Tony?”_

_“Ehn.” Stark made a noncommittal noise._

_“I’m serious, Tony.” They split up, and Lucy scanned the crowd. She checked her watch. How much time did they have? None – less than none. The time of the explosion clicked past. She looked up at the ship and then around at the crewmen bringing her down. They were coiling the ropes, keeping them off the wet ground. One of the theories of the Hindenburg explosion involved the lines dragging over the wet ground._

_“Castle,” she said._

_“Lucy.”_

_She whirled, her heart in her throat. That wasn’t Stark or Rhodes. And she was right, it was Castle, hands in his jacket pockets. She eyed them – he probably had a gun on her – but then she got distracted._

_“How do you know my name?”_

* * *

“I know a lot about you,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

Creepy. “How could you know anything about me? I wasn’t even on this until after you came here.”

He pulled a journal out of his pocket and held it up before flipping it open to a random page. She recognised the familiar scrawl, even some abbreviations she used in her note-taking.

“I didn’t write that,” she said.

“Not yet you didn’t. In a way, you were on this before I was, Lucy. Just not on the side you think you belong on.”

“I would never work with someone who murdered his own family,” Lucy said firmly.

Rage and grief twisted his features and she wondered if he’d take her somewhere else to kill her or if she’d just doomed witnesses.

“That was a setup!” He snapped, making no move to get physical despite the adrenaline almost palpably buzzing through him. “ _I survived but I paid for it / now I’m the villain in your history_. Just – look into it. Carefully. Not everyone at SHIELD can be trusted.”

“Trusted like the guy who shot two Stark Industries workers and stole a time machine?” she hissed.

“I know you, Lucy,” he said, raising the journal. “You’re one bad day away from being me.”

Her breath caught in her throat. She had no idea how to respond to that.

“Don’t move.”

Lucy froze before she realised that it was Rhodes, a gun – an M9, what the fucking fuck was he thinking? – under his coat.

“I expected this from Tony, but not from you,” he said.

“He found me,” Lucy explained.

“We’re going to go for a walk, Castle. Now.”

Castle looked at Rhodes, then at Lucy.

“Don’t even think about it,” Rhodes said, stepping forward. Too close. Castle burst into motion, knocking the gun out of Rhodes’s hand and hitting him in the solar plexus. Rhodes hit the ground hard and people started reacting to the fight, Stark shoving his way through the crowd. Lucy snatched up the gun as Castle fled and Rhodes picked himself up.

“You brought a modern gun!” Lucy hissed.

“Give it!” Rhodes wheezed. She did, of course, and he ran off after Castle.

“Wait,” Lucy said, grabbing Stark as he would have followed. “Why would Castle do this? You’re always the smartest guy in the room, help me figure this out.” She wanted to keep him out of Rhodey’s way as much as solve the puzzle but he _was_ undeniably brilliant.

“You’re the historian. I can’t solve the equation without all the variables. So what happens now?”

“The who’s who of America gets on the Hindenburg to attend the coronation,” Lucy said slowly. “Castle stopped the explosion so that he could cause one when it counted for history.”

“But why would he hate politicians from 80 years ago enough to do all of this just to murder them?” Stark asked. “I mean, Ted Cruz, sure, I would get that, but-”

“Even if you blew up the entire Senate in the present, it wouldn’t cripple America. We’d probably declare war on the whole world, but our institutions are entrenched.”

“Tell that to Donald Trump,” Stark muttered.

“That’s a different kind of threat,” Lucy waved it aside. “But here, now? America isn’t nearly as established. It’s easy to feel like it must have been and it wasn’t that long ago, but – I’m telling you, Frank Castle wants to cripple America in the crib. It would shatter the 20th century as we know it. Maybe let the Nazis win the war. Certainly the Cold War would be unimaginably different.” She would need an excellent library and three days to even begin to have a theory of how things would turn out.

“Well, as we know, that thing’s a bomb waiting to happen. But anyone who got through my security wouldn’t leave it to chance. He’s planted a detonator somewhere on that ship. We find it, I disarm it, we all go home heroes, you and Cap get to re-enact that whole Times Square thing.”

It took Lucy a second to realise he meant the famous Victory Day picture of the soldier and the nurse and not Steve’s experience fleeing SHIELD’s hospital room.

“We’re friends,” she said. “It’s not like that. Come on.”

Tours of the ship had been cancelled due to their late arrival, but in the chaos it wasn’t that hard to sneak aboard. They stayed together, as it wasn’t like Lucy could disarm the bomb or call Stark with her location when she found it. Stark had a better idea of weak points, the best places to blow the bomb. Her job was doing the talking if they ran into staff. They found the bomb in the third place they checked, in a kitchen. Tony chattered as he worked, and she half-listened, mostly trying to figure out why he and Steve had taken such an instant dislike to each other. She hadn’t told Steve how her fiancé died so he couldn’t blame Stark for that. She knew that Steve hadn’t gotten on with Howard initially, but Steve had told her how he’d seen through the man’s initial first impression to his bravery and good heart. Everyone said that Stark took after his father in personality as well as in appearance, so why was Steve making the same mistake twice? Not that Stark was blameless. They’d both behaved like particularly spiteful children, and she hadn’t exactly covered herself in glory either.

“Done,” Stark announced. “Victory is mine, victory is mine. Great day in the morning, victory is mine. Bring me the finest bagels and coffee in all the land!”

“I appreciate the reference, but I’m not your assistant,” Lucy said wryly. “Can you reset the timer?”

“What?”

“The _Hindenburg_ is supposed to blow up. We don’t know what ripples it could have if it doesn’t. My knowledge of safety procedures on airships isn’t very deep, maybe a bigger disaster could happen entirely by accident. And the _Hindenburg_ was a PR flagship for the Nazis, who knows what that could lead to?”

“So you want to kill people? Just _different_ people?”

“It’s on the ground. People are almost done disembarking. It’ll just be crew servicing and preparing for the return, and they’ll have a much easier time escaping. We’ll raise the alarm. Let’s get this done and go find Rhodes.”

Stark fiddled for a moment. “That’s weird,” he said finally. Not that he’d been silent, but this had Lucy tuning back in.

“What’s weird?”

“It wasn’t set to go off when this thing was in the air. It was set to go off in twenty minutes.”

Lucy opened her mouth and closed it again without making a sound.

“Castle wasn’t an explosives guy. Probably just screwed it up or something. I mean, why come back for that?”

There was no need to sneak off the ship – there were still people disembarking, and they just blended in despite their lack of luggage. Lucy found the captain and gave a hysterical performance insisting that her husband had set an explosive and he had to get everyone off and away from the ship. Then they headed in the direction that Castle and Rhodes had gone in, over to less populated hangers.

“Help!” They heard eventually, the voice weak but recognisably Rhodes.

“Rhodey!” Stark replied, bolting for the noise.

Lucy followed. They might be running right into a trap, but she wasn’t going to let him do it alone.

It was just Rhodes, lying in a pool of his own blood in a darkened airport hanger. Not a pool, exactly – a trail. A long trail. He’d been dragging himself, all alone.

“Castle’s guy shot me,” he said, voice full of pain.

“There was a bomb, we were disarming it,” Lucy explained. “I’m – I’m so sorry.”

“Rhodey, I’m going to take care of you,” Stark said, voice panicky.

“I’m going to get a car,” she said. “Stark, just – apply pressure. You know?”

“I’m a genius. I’ll figure it out!” he snapped. She ran, hotwiring the first car she came across and driving it back through the chaos. The bomb had gone off. People were screaming and trying to put out fires, but it seemed relatively contained.

“Did you hotwire this?” Rhodes asked, once they’d gotten him in the back seat. He was pale, a combination of blood loss and the pain it had caused him to get him into the car.

“Yes,” she said.

“H – how?” he asked. She glanced back at him, lying with his head in Stark’s lap, soaking the car seat in blood despite the makeshift bandages. Keeping him talking was probably a good thing, and Stark looked uncharacteristically unprepared to do it.

“My uncle was a former car thief. I had an unconventional childhood,” she admitted. “Maybe that’s why they asked me to tutor Steve.”

“That must have been something,” Rhodes said, voice weaker. “You … you tell him … the Dodgers?”

“That was a rough day,” Lucy said, and she wasn’t even joking.

Rhodes didn’t respond.

“Rhodey? Rhodey!” Stark snapped.

“This isn’t a bad part for him to be unconscious for,” Lucy said and turned into the field. She and Stark were going to have a hell of a time getting Rhodes into the Lifeboat. They wouldn’t be able to carry him any further than necessary. The car bumped violently, but if Rhodes had lost consciousness then speed was of the essence.

It was a struggle to get him up into the Lifeboat, and Lucy was wincing the whole time thinking of the additional damage they were probably doing to his back, but the blood loss was the more pressing issue, just then. She buckled him in with shaking fingers as Stark prepared the return trip, just barely getting herself buckled in before he sent them careening through space-time. She unbuckled and threw herself at the door again.

“Medic!” she screamed.

“Lucy?” Steve called.

“We need a stretcher. Rhodes was shot,” she expanded, looking at Hill, not Steve.

“Out of the way,” Hill ordered, and Steve helped her down before they could get the stairs back in place, frantic when he caught sight of the blood all over her.

“Lucy,” he said again, running his hands over her in ways that were gonna make him unable to look her in the eye later. THe SHIELD personnel got Stark out of the Lifeboat. It was too small for spectators.

“I’m fine. It’s not mine,” she said, and hugged him. “Seriously, Steve. I’m not hurt.”

“I knew I should have gone with you.”

“Oh as if you could have done any better,” Stark spat. “Everything special about you came out of a bottle!”

Steve pulled away to face him. “Take away your time machine, what are you?”

“Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist?” Stark spitballed. His veneer of nonchalance was barely recognisable above the fury that was oozing out of him.

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you!” Steve shot back.

“Stop!” Lucy shouted, loud and shrill enough that everyone except the medics looked at her. “You,” she said, pointing at Stark and dropping her voice. “It was not his fault that your friend was shot, and it wasn’t his fault that your father was shot, or whatever it is that you’re holding against him. And _you,_ ” she turned back to Steve, even angrier. “I’ve spent the last six months telling everyone that you aren’t as rigid and judgemental as they assume that you are based on the people who’ve weaponised your memory. And you just made a liar out of me.” She stalked away, ignoring him calling her name.

“Lucy, wait,” Hill said.

“Can we debrief tomorrow, please?” Lucy asked, holding back tears.

Hill looked at her for a long moment, putting a hand on her arm. “That’ll be fine. You did a good job today, and I know it was hard. I just want to introduce you to Agent Sitwell, he’ll be running the day to day on this operation.” She indicated the bald, bespectacled man beside her.

“Dr. Preston,” Sitwell said “I just need you to remember that your fiancé is not cleared to know anything more than that you had a rough day.”

“Fiancé?” Lucy repeated, breathless. “He’s still alive?”

“Come here,” Hill said, leading her over to a computer terminal. “Smoak, pull up Preston’s file. Show her a picture of her fiancé. I can’t tell you much about him, I only just found out he existed.”

The blonde spun her computer chair to look at her, ponytail bouncing. “You don’t remember your fiancé? Yikes. That’s gonna be fun to go home to.” She was younger than Lucy, pretty, wearing pink-rimmed glasses that matched her nail polish and ballet flats decorated like panda bears.

“Smoak.”

“Right! Yes.” She hit a few keys and up popped Lucy’s file. She navigated to a picture of a model-pretty stranger. “Hot and a doctor,” Smoak said admiringly. “That’s a pretty good start, right?”

The considerable force of the blonde’s smile wasn’t enough to lift Lucy’s dashed hopes.

“Maybe I’d better go through this,” she suggested quietly. “Before I decide how to deal with that. My parents – are they still alive?”

“Ooh, I know half this answer without looking. Your Mom’s a SHIELD agent. She’s alive. I met her, once. She’s – intimidating.”

“She’s with SHIELD? Not the CIA? Is she sick?”

“Sick?”

“Lung cancer.”

“As far as I know without breaking into her medical records, she’s healthy.”

“And Foggy?”

Smoak looked blankly at her.

“My brother.”

Smoak turned back to the computer and ran a search, then another, then a third.

“I don’t have anything on file,” Smoak said. “Just you and your mom, no other family.”

Drawing a breath in felt like trying to breathe molasses. Lucy felt a sting as her fingernails, short as they were, dug into her palms. “But I exist,” Lucy said. “Not just – standing here, I mean. No one was surprised when I got out of the Lifeboat, which means that you recruited me in this timeline, too. _I exist_ so he must, right? We just haven’t found him yet.” Her brain refused to accept the obvious answer.

“I think-”

“Preston,” Hill said gently.

“Lucy,” Smoak said. “I’m so sorry, Lucy.”

“But I exist,” Lucy repeated, mind stuck like a broken record. “My phone. I want my phone,” she said. Hill handed it over and she searched her messages, her contacts, her pictures, her bare bones social media presence. Foggy was nowhere to be found, and she cracked, burying her face in her hands and sobbing, near-silent out of habit. Smoak hugged her and she cried on the stranger’s shoulder oblivious to the audience and the bloodstains transferring onto her dress. When she pulled herself together somewhat she realised that Hill was scaring off onlookers with the force of her silent glare.

Steve eventually finished fighting with Stark or whatever he’d been up to and took her home, insisting on taking the couch. Under other circumstances she might have fought, but she had felt like she was moving through a fog as she scrubbed the dried blood from under her fingernails. She woke up to multiple panicked voice mails and text messages from her “fiancé”, the crushing new reality of being an only child, and a knock on the bedroom door.

“Lucy,” Steve knocked again.

“Yeah, come in,” she said. She was wearing a borrowed t-shirt and her underwear, but he’d spent too much time backstage with chorus girls to be as body-shy as people assumed.

“The Mothership went out again. You up to go after it?”

“I’ll get dressed and go in,” she said, and he ducked out and closed the door behind him.

* * *

“What does May 22 1934 mean to you?” Sitwell demanded.

“Give her a moment,” Steve snapped.

Lucy thought and then shrugged. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Plug it into Google.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, Agent Sitwell,” Lucy replied.

“ _The Panchen Lama visited Shanghai after ten years of exile enforced by the late 13th Dalai Lama, spent mostly in Mongolia_ ,” read Smoak.

“Don’t think Castle cares,” Stark said, sauntering up and glaring at Steve.

“Well, what was going on around that time?”

“Oh only the Great Depression, the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the Barmen Declaration was signed at the end of May, the Austrofascist Federal State of Austria is newly created, Night of the Long Knives was June 30, Hitler became Fuhrer August 2, the USSR joined the League of Nations, the Japanese invade Manchuria, the Long March of the PLA in Communist China began, which was the beginning of Mao seizing power…”

“Bonnie and Clyde,” Smoak said. “They died May 23, 1934 in Arkansas. I’m sending the coordinates to the Lifeboat.”

“We’ll rustle up some new clothes,” Hill told Lucy.

“I’m not going,” she said. The men, who had taken a few steps away, stopped and turned back.

“What?” Stark asked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Felicity Smoak is borrowed from Arrow.
> 
> Also, we’re still not sure what ignited the Hindenburg. Wet ropes on the ground is just one of the theories.


	4. This is not a game

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “She wears a key around her neck. I need it.”  
> “That sounds like a you problem,” Lucy said.  
> “Seeing as how my buddy is on a rooftop right now with your brother in the crosshairs, I kind of feel like it’s your problem too.”

_Previously_

_“Bonnie and Clyde,” Smoak said. “They died May 23, 1934 in Arkansas. I’m sending the coordinates to the Lifeboat.”_

_“We’ll rustle up some new clothes,” Hill told Lucy._

_“I’m not going,” she said. The men, who had taken a few steps away, stopped and turned back._

_“What?” Stark asked._

* * *

Timeline 2 6:11 am

“You don’t need me,” Lucy said. “Steve is going to be the soldier now, right? He remembers the 1930s.” Arkansas was safely away from Brooklyn, Stark was the pilot – she was superfluous. “How is Rhodes?”

“Stable,” Hill said. “Lucy, I don’t know what Castle wants with Bonnie and Clyde but his larger goal is political. They might need your knowledge in the course of the mission. I understand that you’re grieving, and that things didn’t go well last time, but do you really think that they’re better off without you?”

Lucy had been too caught up yesterday to think of it, but now she couldn’t get it out of her head that her father had told her that she didn’t belong in the field. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“If you can’t go, we understand,” Steve assured her.

“Come on, Lucy. If you don’t come, we’ll probably kill each other,” Stark wheedled.

“I’m really not up to refereeing,” Lucy warned. She had never felt this exhausted, not when she was working and going to school and taking care of Foggy, not when they’d been notified that their dad had died in prison, not when the cancer had gotten the best of her mother right before her thesis defence, not even when her actual fiancé had died.

“We won’t fight,” Steve said.

“Scout’s honour,” Stark swore, holding up the wrong hand.

Lucy sighed. “Get me the clothes,” she said. She turned back to Smoak.

“I didn’t thank you, yesterday,” she said.

“You don’t have to. I’m Felicity, by the way. I work for Stark, not SHIELD, so this whole last name thing is very bro culture to me,” she said, smiling brightly.

“I’m Lucy. You were very kind, Felicity, and I appreciate it.” She forced a smile, knowing that it wasn’t believable but hoping it communicated her gratitude anyway.

The blonde nodded. “Anytime,” she said quietly.

“Can you bring up everything abut Bonnie and Clyde’s last few days?” Lucy requested, and did some serious speed-reading while a SHIELD employee did her hair and makeup. The woman had a shaved head and the most no-nonsense expression that Lucy had ever seen, but she was deft and precise with the old-fashioned cosmetics and hair, achieving in twenty minutes what Lucy would have struggled to do in twice that time.

“So what’s Castle’s play?” Steve asked as they buckled in.

“I still don’t know what he’d want with them,” Lucy said. “I mean, they were criminals-”

“Outlaws,” Stark said.

Lucy glanced at the back of his head but continued. “And they were media darlings, but they were never in danger of bringing down the state or whatever it is Castle’s goal is. They were small fry.”

The two men’s protests overlapped. Their mutual admiration of the criminal couple was obvious, even if Lucy was left without a sense of the actual words they’d each used.

“How can _you_ say that?” Stark asked. “Here we go.”

After the jump, Lucy had not only the crying hangover but the shaky, wrung out, clammy all over feeling of having thrown up, even though this time there wasn’t anything in her stomach to expel. They climbed out of the Lifeboat, Steve helping her down despite looking shaky himself, and started walking toward town. “They murdered people to clumsily steal money, but I’m supposed to be all excited to fangirl over them just because they were infatuated with each other?”

“First off, they’re in love,” Steve corrected. “That was obvious, even from the pictures.”

“They’re _Romeo and Juliet_ , doesn’t that make your little nerd heart pound faster?” Stark asked.

“You know that Juliet is 14 in that, right? About to be married off to a man old enough to be her father? And Romeo only gets dragged to her family’s party by his friends because he is soooo heartbroken over this other girl that he swears he’s going to die from it. She spends the play trying to figure out how to get away from her family and he spends it trying to get into her pants. If they’d been allowed to date for six months they’d have broken up and forgotten all about one another.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a bitter old hag,” Stark said, his tone light enough that Steve looked sideways at him but didn’t comment.

“Card carrying,” Lucy replied crisply. “Bonnie and Clyde were 19 and 20 when they met. He was fresh out of prison and she was trapped in a bad marriage. He was probably raising money, mostly by robbing rural gas stations and stores, _not_ insured banks, to buy an arsenal that would allow him to go up against the penitentiary system. He’d been assaulted in prison. According to his family, he came out a very different man, violent and short-tempered.”

“They’d give their hostages money to get home. You don’t get the romance in it at all?” Steve pressed. “Living free of obligations, on the run….”

“Defying authority isn’t inherently virtuous,” Lucy said.

“You are so not punk,” Stark said.

“I’m comfortable with that,” Lucy agreed.

“ _You_ are surprisingly punk,” Stark said, turning to Steve.

“If it’s a surprise, you’ve obviously never looked at his actual record,” Lucy said dryly. Was that their problem? That they each saw the other as an authority figure, and couldn’t imagine anyone seeing them as one? Lucy was younger than Stark, but not by _that_ much. They’d both grown up in a world of Captain America cartoons and breakfast cereals and public service ads encouraging them to brush their teeth and not drink poison. Steve had grown up during the Great Depression, the poor and sickly son of an Irish immigrant and widow. He looked at Stark and saw a robber baron, the kind of capitalist tycoon who had built his fortune on the low wages and poor working conditions of people like Steve and Sarah Rogers.

She glanced across Stark at Steve – and that in an of itself was a development, the two men walking side by side instead of using her as a buffer – and saw him looking stricken. “Steve?”

“It’s nothing,” he said. She wasn’t going to push, but she couldn’t mask her concern. “That was kind of Buck’s nickname for me,” he admitted. “I called him a jerk and he called me a punk.”

They had covered the punk movement, broadly, in their history lessons, so Lucy knew that Steve knew what the word meant in modern times. She wasn’t sure if he knew that _she_ knew that in the 1940s it often (though not always) meant a younger, slight or “effeminate” gay man. It didn’t really matter, not at the moment, but she made a mental note to bring up bisexuality again at some point.

They hit town and went looking for the bank, which ought not to have been robbed quite yet, though they wouldn’t have a lot of time to figure out Castle’s plan before the outlaws crashed the party.

Steve stumbled over nothing, and she turned to him.

“Lucy!” she heard from across the street and froze. Steve’s uncharacteristic clumsiness flew out of her mind. She whirled, terrified that it had been some kind of auditory hallucination, but there it was – visual, too.

“Tell me you see him,” she begged.

“That’s Castle alright,” Steve said grimly, hand going for his gun.

“He has Foggy,” she said, stopping him. “Steve.”

“Your brother?” Steve frowned in confusion.

Lucy was being a moron. Steve hadn’t been on the trip. He only remembered the timeline where Foggy hadn’t existed.

“He’s a terrorist,” Steve said.

“Steve, you fire bullets anywhere near my brother and I’ll shoot you myself,” she said, dead serious, and took off across the street, throwing herself at Foggy, who caught her in a hug.

“What the hell is happening, Luce?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” she said.

“Are you crying?”

“No,” she said. She was, a little, of course, but she tried to tamp it down, keep it from ruining her makeup. “I thought you were dead,” she explained, pulling away slightly.

“Nobody hurt me, they just kidnapped me. Luce, time travel is seriously real?”

“Yeah, thanks to Tony Stark,” she said, nodding back over her shoulder.

“Stark?” Foggy repeated.

Stark and Steve were still on the other side of the street, looking furious but not necessarily at each other. Because, right, Castle had shot Stark’s best friend. Lucy felt guilty for forgetting it, even for a moment.

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded, stepping between Foggy and Castle.

“I knew that changing the _Hindenburg_ would wipe Foggy out of the timeline,” Castle said. “So we grabbed him and took him with us. If you’re out of place you’re not affected by changes in the timeline.”

“How generous of you. Did it occur to you that you could just not try to change history?”

“There’ll come a time when you’ll be on my side of this.”

“You keep saying that like you can trick me into making it a self-fulfilling prophecy. You tried to kill a friend of mine.”

“You know what a Scout Sniper is?” he asked.

“You must know that I’m an Army brat,” she said.

“One shot, one kill. If I wanted that guy dead, he’d be dead.”

“Can we circle back to time travel being a thing? Or what we’re doing with Bonnie and Clyde? Or Tony Stark?” Lucy turned to look at Foggy and realised she’d gotten closer to Frank somehow. She’d say nose to nose, but unfortunately it was more like nose to chest. She stepped back.

“She wears a key around her neck. I need it.”

“That sounds like a you problem,” Lucy said.

“Seeing as how my buddy is on a rooftop right now with your brother in the crosshairs, I kind of feel like it’s your problem too.”

Lucy went cold, looking up and just barely spotting the signs of a sniper in the clock tower. She reached behind her for Foggy, pushing him more securely behind her, and then hand signed the information to Steve, who was still across the street.

“Luce,” Foggy protested.

“Fine. I get the key and you give me Foggy?”

“I’ll go,” Foggy said.

“Absolutely not,” she said, whirling to face him.

“Luce-”

“I spent the last twelve hours feeling like I’d never be happy again,” she said flatly. “You’re not going to try to con two unstable murderers.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” he reminded her.

She folded her arms. “Lying and grifting are different,” she said.

“And lawyering is closer to both than history is. I’m good on my feet. You hate doing history lectures without prep.”

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t shoot you right now,” Steve said, coming up with his gun hidden in his jacket.

“The sniper.” Curtis Hoyle said. She recognised him from the briefing. They’d served together and SHIELD had identified him from the security footage. He was black, a little shorter than Castle but just as broad, and she knew that underneath his pants leg was a modern prosthetic.

“What if I say we take our chances?” Stark asked. He and Steve looked like they thought they could kill Castle through the combined force of their minds. The effect was somewhat ruined as Steve swayed on his feet.

“Steve?”

“I’m fine,” he said, shaking his head like a dog shaking off water. “Lucy, I’m fine. Just – time travel I guess.” Lucy hadn’t had near-fainting spells or noticed Stark or Rhodes feeling poorly, but three people on one trip wasn’t a big sample size, she supposed.

“Castle is holding Foggy hostage to get a key that Bonnie wears around her neck,” Lucy said. “So I’m going to go pretend to be a fellow bank robber, I think.”

Stark snorted. Lucy glared. “You were serious?” he asked. “You’re like, the least criminal person I’ve met. Except Pepper. Pepper’s made of actual sunshine and rainbows.”

“I have done criminal things,” Lucy argued. “I’m a better liar than everyone thinks.”

“Looking for Dad? Planning hypothetical prison escapes? Not exactly hardcore stuff. You just have this general goody two-shoes vibe,” Foggy said.

“You kind of do,” Hoyle agreed.

“See? My kidnapper agrees with me. And he’s the nice one,” Foggy added.

“Thanks,” Hoyle said.

“You kept a bag over my head. It’s a low bar,” Foggy shot back companionably.

“That’s fair,” agreed Hoyle, looking pointedly at Castle, who looked like this was all giving him a headache.

“I’ll go with her,” Steve declared. It was undercut slightly by him swaying on his feet again.

“Okay, you’re also less plausible as a criminal than her,” Stark said, edging closer while he pretended not to be concerned.

“She’s not going in without backup,” Steve said. “And you can’t resist antagonising people.”

“Can, too.”

“Cannot.”

“Boys,” Lucy warned.

“Oh, I just had the worst idea ever,” Foggy said aloud. Everyone looked at him.

“I hate this,” Stark said. “Absolutely not.”

“What are you two talking about?” Lucy asked.

“He shot Rhodey!” Stark hissed.

“We shot to wound, not to kill,” Castle said.

“He may never walk again!” Stark snapped. Lucy closed her eyes against the news, wondering how much of that damage was cause by the bullet on its way into the man, and how much was all the rough handling getting him home. If the thought hadn’t occurred to Stark, though, she wasn’t going to put it there. His reaction that day had made it beyond obvious that he genuinely cared about the man.

“Also, he’s a terrorist,” Steve reminded her.

“I still don’t know what we’re talking about,” Lucy said.

“Ohh,” Hoyle said. “Hmmm.”

“Share with the class?” Lucy asked, getting testy now. She wasn’t accustomed to being slow on the uptake.

“It’s a classic story. Good girl meets a bad boy and either she reforms him, or he drags her down with him,” Hoyle said. “Stark, Rogers, and Foggy are out, I’m illegal until the 70s, so….” Lucy looked at Castle. She sighed. “Frank definitely looks like a potential criminal,” Hoyle said cheerfully.

“Thanks Curt,” Castle said dryly.

“We get the key before 9 am tomorrow morning, Bonnie and Clyde get shot as planned, history doesn’t change. We go home and we figure out how to stop Castle next time around.” _And I have my brother back_ , she thought desperately. She didn’t think she would survive if this was false hope. She turned beseeching eyes on her teammates.

Steve looked at her gravely, looking pale. “Fine, I’m in.”

“I don’t like it,” Stark repeated. This time it wasn’t a protest, just a statement of fact. She was startled again to find that she’d somehow become one of the people he cared about.

“Get them home,” she told him. “Steve is not taking time travel well.”

“I’m fine,” Steve argued. His face seemed almost entirely bloodless.

“You look like you’re going to faint,” Lucy snapped.

“Men pass out,” Castle said. Was he making a joke?

“Stark-”

“And how are you getting home?” Stark asked. “We’re not just leaving you here.”

“We can’t all fit anyway. I’ll just catch a ride home with Frank here.”

Hoyle snorted, smirking down at his shoes.

“What? What happened to ‘don’t get in the car with a stranger’?” Foggy asked angrily.

“She wasn’t trying to figure out what the stranger was using for a home base so she could go back with a SWAT team,” Castle said. “Stark, you can come back for her. The Lifeboat only has three seats, right?”

“How do you know that? And how did know my security procedures?” Stark demanded.

Castle didn’t look at her, but Lucy could feel his surprise directed her way anyway. Or maybe she was projecting. In any case, she would have told them. Probably. When she got a chance to debrief.

“And why wouldn’t he just kill you when he gets what he wants?” Stark continued. Steve was leaning on him now. Castle stayed silent, waiting for her to supply the answer. He was following her lead, and that settled her nerves and unsettled them in equal measure.

“Because he says that in the future I go to his past and give him a journal that sets this whole thing off,” Lucy said. “I’ve seen the journal. It’s my handwriting. He needs me alive. Now we’re running out of time, and maybe so is Steve. Do you trust me or not?”

Stark looked at his hands for a long moment. “I did my research,” he said, finally looking up to focus on a point just above her left shoulder. “Last night.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m asking you to do this, Tony. Please.” It was strange, calling him by his first name, but using Stark didn’t seem right.

He nodded. “Come on, kids. Foggy, you say? Weird name. I need help hauling this one and Castle doesn’t get two hostages. Let’s go.”

“I can walk,” Steve protested.

“Sure you can, big guy. Same spot?” he asked Lucy. She nodded.

“Be careful,” Foggy said, hugging her. She hugged back hard. Then he pulled away and moved to Steve’s other side.

“Are you with us?” Lucy asked Hoyle.

“Interracial 1930s bank robbing crew? No, I don’t think so.” He looked to Castle for confirmation. “See you later,” he said, and then looked Lucy over. “It was interesting to meet you, Dr Preston,” he said finally. “Watch your six,” he ordered Castle, who checked an old watch.

“Grandfather’s,” he said, when he caught her looking. “Forties, but close enough. We have time for lunch, come on.”

“You didn’t have breakfast?” she asked but fell into step. They’d jumped ahead a few hours in the day when they’d gone back in time. He adjusted his step for her shorter stride without being asked.

“I did. You didn’t.”

Lucy’s stomach growled audibly at the thought of food so she couldn’t exactly argue. “That is not in the journal,” she said.

“You didn’t write about it, but you tracked your weight in the margins when things were bad, and it never went up,” Castle replied. “You spent the last twelve hours thinking your brother was dead.” Lucy flushed. She hated the vulnerability of knowing less about him than he knew about her. She was _private_ and the unfamiliarity of this was compounded by the fact that she was still struggling to come to terms with the idea that she was going to go Dark Side at some point.

Despite his curt manner with her, Castle was downright charming with the middle-aged waitress, who giggled like a schoolgirl as she poured them some coffee and left them with the menus.

“So what’s the key for?” she asked, sipping her coffee.

He gave her a _yeah, right_ look.

“What’s the crusade for?” she asked. “Hey, you keep saying I’m going to join you. Give me the pitch.”

“I don’t know if you’re ready for it.”

“Men who think they know more about me than I know about myself. My favourite,” Lucy said, smiling too-sweetly.

“You should look at the menu,” he said. “You’re hungry.”

“Is that a joke?” she asked.

He quirked a half smile and leaned in. “In my defense, I could hear your stomach growling. And I have your journal.”

“A journal from the future,” Lucy said, leaning back and folding her arms. “Or an alternate timeline?”

“Menu,” he reminded.

“They have all day waffles, I’m done looking. So?”

He hesitated, looking at her for a long moment. “The future,” he said finally, turning and flagging down the waitress, who took their order and left them alone again. Lucy didn’t care that she ought, operationally, to be forgettable. She was going to use SHIELD’s money to leave an enormous tip. Castle was nearly a foot taller than her, with a military bearing and serious muscle mass that required proper, protein-heavy nutrition, and they were both dressed sharply, with no signs of the Great Depression affecting them. His build was exactly what the men’s fashion of the day was designed to highlight – usually with wide, padded shoulders. Castle’s suit was tailored well and she didn’t think there was much padding. They were standing out regardless.

“That I wrote about this.”

“About your attempts to carry out the same mission,” he hedged. It didn’t come naturally, and his discomfort was almost endearing. Lucy also did a mental fist-pump. Apparently he hadn’t been involved in the first attempt. “Things have changed already, so I guess it’s an alternate timeline, too.”

“But the _Hindenburg_ , that was in there,” she said. She couldn’t imagine a version of herself who was comfortable with innocent casualties, but there was no other way to know that Foggy would have been wiped from existence by what – a Hindenburg survivor’s descendent, maybe? Getting assigned to the mission where their parents had met? Well – where their mother had met his father. She hadn’t begun to process the reverse Darth Vader reveal. She also ignored the little voice that reminded her that the bomb had been set to blow the ship with minimal casualties. Like Tony said, it was probably a mistake. Or a mind game.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “And that’s all you’re getting out of me today about the journal.”

“Why’d you save Foggy?” she asked. Had the whole thing been just a ploy to prove his _one bad day_ theory?

He looked at her like that was a stupid question.

“He can’t be the only one that change wiped out.”

“I’m sure it did wipe some people out. And created some others. Foggy was the only one who was gonna be mourned.”

“And that’s all that matters?”

“War has casualties,” he said. “I was a soldier. The US government made sure I got comfortable with that. And not being born isn’t the same as dying bloody.”

She thought of his family, of the wild-eyed grief she’d caught a glimpse of on that field in 1937 and didn’t have a comeback.

“I’m not here for the government,” she said.

“Coulda fooled me,” he replied.

The waitress brought their food and Lucy smiled and thanked her. She inhaled half the waffle before she registered Castle grinning around his sandwich.

“Earlier today I told Stark that acting against authority isn’t inherently admirable,” she said, trying to get them back to more familiar ground. “Obeying it isn’t inherently admirable either. I’m on this mission because I believe in it.”

“You don’t think we could do better?” he asked. “I’m the one who thinks people are shitbags, you’re supposed to be telling me that I don’t have enough faith in them.”

“I don’t have any reason to believe that you’re trying to make the world a better place,” she said. “Well, no reason to believe that I’d agree with your definition.” No one was a bad guy in their own mind, after all.

There was only one problem with her statement. Staring at him over her plate of waffles and his sandwich, she found that her gut was telling her that she did believe that he was trying to make the world better.

She rarely let her feelings lead – Foggy was the follow-your-heart guy, she was a planner like the Colonel and their mother. But she tried not to lie to herself, either. She went to work finishing her waffle, using the excuse not to talk anymore. When she was finished, Castle pushed his plate over to her and picked up his coffee mug, looking out the window as she finished his fries. She reached for her purse but he got there first, leaving six $10 bills for the $0.60 breakfast, tucked where the waitress wouldn’t see them till they left, and joked with her on the way out, leaving the woman with a fond smile on her face.

“Where are you getting operational funds?” she asked.

He shrugged. “There are plenty of things that are readily available in the future that were much more valuable in the past. Spices in the Age of Sail, that kind of thing.”

“You haven’t been to the Age of Sail,” Lucy said.

He shrugged. “That kind of thing,” he repeated. “I’m not an idiot. I’m not gonna tell you what shit I’m buying so SHIELD can track it.”

“I could put together a shortlist,” she said.

“It’s a pretty long list that you put together, actually,” he said, reminding her again that she had supposedly planned this.

“Time-check?” she asked.

“Time to head to the bank,” he said, and tucked his hands in his pockets.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter did not go as planned on several levels. Among other things, when I was looking up period slang I stumbled across the “punk” thing and platonic best friends Steve & Bucky was my plan but I can’t be expected to ignore that. Loosely based on Timeless 1x09 “The Last Ride of Bonnie and Clyde”.  
> Originally I had Lucy’s sibling get wiped out of history as they did on the show, but as an overprotective big sister myself it just got way too angsty and wasn’t fun to write. Timeless isn’t super clear on the rules of time travel. It makes some but they’re not well explained and sometimes contradicted. I don’t think that Foggy would “survive” this way in the show, but I have a clear set of time travel rules in my head and they’ll be consistent throughout the fic.


	5. Don't let them know just what you're for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At heart Steve still thought of himself as the 90 pound asthmatic, and he had an ‘aw, shucks’ charm that he could whip out to come across as unassuming. Frank could be charming but he had no such gift of appearing harmless. He carried himself like a dangerous man.

_Previously_

_“Castle is holding Foggy hostage to get a key that Bonnie wears around her neck,” Lucy said. “So I’m going to go pretend to be a fellow bank robber, I think.”_

_…_

_“Time-check?” she asked._

_“Time to head to the bank,” he said, and tucked his hands in his pockets._

“What’s the plan?” she asked.

“If we can get the drop on them in the bank, we do. We won’t have long. The cops got tipped off,” he looked at her sideways.

“Why?”

“Plan was to go in as a private investigator, help the cops catch them and get the key that way.”

“I wouldn’t have been any use in that,” Lucy said.

“I only kidnapped your brother because people who are time travelling don’t get affected by timeline changes,” Castle admitted. “I wasn’t going to keep him if you wouldn’t work with me.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that. It would have been easy to dismiss if he was like Tony, someone who talked and fidgeted and blew things up to distract you from what he was really feeling. Maybe to distract himself. But for someone with resting murder face, Castle made it really hard to remember that he was the bad guy, and that was concerning. She could make a run for it, slip into the crowd and bet he wouldn’t make a scene, or hide and stall until he had to get on-mission. She could get back to the Lifeboat and her present without helping him, maybe even having hurt his plans with the delay. But she’d given her word, and her instinct told her that breaking it would mean something to Castle. She wasn’t sure know why that mattered, but she wasn’t willing to burn that bridge just yet.

And he might alter history, left to his own devices. Stopping him was a tactical goal, Steve’s job. Her job was to protect the timeline, and the best way to do that was to tag along.

“What are you carrying?” Lucy asked.

“Couple of Beretta 34’s. I was going to be side by side with cops. You were real clear in the journal of the dangers of exposing people to advanced weapons.”

That did sound like her. She fell silent until they approached the bank.

“Are you sure that this story is going to work for you?” she asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Your wife….” She couldn’t find the words, but she could see that he understood her anyway.

“Your fiancé,” he replied.

“I thought about it, now I’m asking you.”

“Yeah, I’m going to be okay.” He offered his arm and she took it. Halfway across the street she chuckled.

“Last time I told the authorities you were my husband,” she explained.

“What?”

“You were a mental patient. Best I could think of to explain the repairman jumpsuit. I explained that you’d gotten cold feet about your lobotomy.”

“Lobotomy?”

“Walter Freeman starts doing lobotomies in 1936 for mental patients. It can be helpful in select cases, but it was marketed as more or less a cure-all. He was partnered with a neurosurgeon initially but he liked to do the surgery himself, despite his lack of training.” She kept her voice low, because she was talking about the future, and he leaned over to hear. It made them look like a real couple, probably, as they got into line at the bank teller window. “He’d do it in front of spectators with an icepick and no masks or gloves or operating rooms. At least one woman died because he stopped to take a picture and the icepick slipped.” She shivered. “At least a hundred died before he was banned from doing it. Before that, he drove around the country.”

“So you were going to do that to me, huh?” he teased. She grinned at him before she remembered that she _wasn’t_ supposed to find him charming _._

Before she could go any further into that, there was a gunshot. She jumped, adrenaline starting to pump through her veins. _No turning back now_. Clyde was carrying two guns, and spread his arms in a V, looking back and forth between his sightlines. Instantly Lucy felt the shiver of goosebumps down her arms, the prickle of the hair on the back of her neck standing on end.

“This here is a stick-up!” He announced. “We are the Barrow gang!”

A young man almost directly behind Clyde took a step toward him.

“I wouldn’t, handsome,” said Bonnie, levelling her own gun at his head. He turned slightly and flushed red. Bonnie and Clyde were both attractive, both visibly enjoying their performance, but there was something about Clyde that set Lucy on edge. Despite the reading she’d done, despite knowing how his life would end, she felt like she didn’t know what he would do from one second to the next. He was grinning now, but he’d shoot her in a heartbeat if it became convenient. Castle took her by the elbow and tugged her to the other side of him as Clyde moved through the bank, collecting the bank’s money and grandstanding all the while, and she realised that she felt safer with Castle between them. She’d been a little worried, at the diner, feeling so comfortable with her brother’s kidnapper, that her sense of danger was broken. Clyde had it blaring the alert. What did that mean about Castle? Or her?

A shot was fired outside. Henry Methvin, from Clyde’s crew? Lucy wondered. Or Hoyle? An overanxious local cop jumping the gun? Castle pulled his pieces out from under his jacket. Clyde drew on him. Sloppy of them, not to have noticed Castle before, she realised. He’d tracked them around the bank with a calm that the other hostages lacked, and even his stillness had the deliberate air of a predator. At heart Steve still thought of himself as the 90 pound asthmatic, and he had an ‘aw, shucks’ charm that he could whip out to come across as unassuming. Castle could be charming but he had no such gift of appearing harmless. He carried himself like a dangerous man.

“You’re Clyde Barrow, right?” Castle asked. “Look, those cops question us, they’re gonna figure out I got warrants. Way I see it, you bring this many cops my way, least you can do is team up as long as it takes to lose them.”

Clyde considered it a moment, looking him over, before nodding. “You got a car?” Clyde asked, glancing out at the cop’s set up. “Ours is too far.”

Castle checked, too.

“There’s one right there, Negro hunched down in the front seat. Must be waiting for one of these rich folks.” Hoyle was out there, Lucy realised, having Castle’s back. “Count of three?” Castle proposed.

“Go,” Clyde said instead. He went out first, went out firing. Castle made sure to get to the car first, shoving his gun in Hoyle’s face. “Move,” he barked, intimidating despite being hunched down behind the car with bullets flying all around them. Hoyle backed out of the car with his hands up.

“Son of a bitch,” he said. Lucy could see Castle flash him a grin, but Bonnie and Clyde didn’t. He crawled in the backseat and, when she followed, handed her one of the Berettas. “Pocket,” he said, and she reloaded for him, hands sure despite the adrenaline of the firefight, and traded it for the other Beretta as Clyde got in the driver’s seat and peeled away with a whoop.

It took Lucy a damn sight longer to relax than Bonnie and Clyde, who snuggled up almost as soon as the cops were gone from the rear view.

“You okay, doll?” Castle asked her.

“You guys ain’t been doing this long, huh?” Bonnie asked.

Castle draped an arm around her and she let him rearrange her with her back to his chest and her legs stretched across the seat. “I have,” he said. “She was an honest citizen till she met me.” He kissed her hair.

Bonnie giggled.

“I helped with some jobs,” Lucy protested. “But we’ve kept a lower profile. That was an awful lot of cops showing up awful quick.”

“You’re in the wrong business,” Clyde said.

“Or maybe you are,” Lucy shot back before she could think better of it. Castle’s right arm tightened in warning where it was wrapped around her middle and the left moved the gun casually into a better position to shoot through the seat.

“Aw, Clyde, don’t give her a hard time,” Bonnie chided. “I think it’s sweet. And you know that there’s no one the law wants as bad as us.”

“It’s true. Helped us out, before,” Lucy said. “In Kansas City, after we pulled the Depot job, everyone was lookin’ for you. And again when we did the Union Bank job in Atchison, back in March.”

“That was you?” Bonnie asked. Authorities at the time had blamed both on the Barrow gang, but historical hindsight had proven that they’d been nowhere near them. Lucy had no qualms about claiming credit to give them some legitimacy.

Castle nodded.

“Well, look. We got a place to lay low. Why don’t you spend the night?”

“Bonnie-”

“Clyde, it’s fine.” She laughed. “I didn’t even get your names.”

“Frank,” said Castle. “This is Lucy.” She moved her hand to cover his on her stomach and it slid over his ring. He froze for a moment. Lucy checked – Clyde had reclaimed Bonnie’s attention. Castle balanced the gun on the knee she wasn’t draped across and moved to take the ring off. She closed her hand on his to stop him and pulled hers out from under her dress, slipping it off the chain and onto her finger. She fanned her fingers next to his and glanced up over her shoulder at him. He nodded, looking relieved. Both rings were gold, his a plain band and hers a small diamond in an uncomplicated setting. They matched well enough. Her wearing the engagement ring without a wedding ring wouldn’t have been that odd, either.

The farmhouse was isolated, of course, and theirs was the only car in the drive. Methvin was probably meeting with the cops. That was good – the fewer moving parts involved, the better. As they got out of the car, a dog got to his feet. He was tied up, too thin, and bearing visible wounds, but he whined and wagged his tail hopefully at Lucy. Clyde aimed a lazy kick at him on his way by and the dog shrank back with a yelp. Lucy spun to glare at Castle, the only safe target for the fury she felt and saw the same expression on his face.

“I can handle this,” he offered, the words barely audible.

“No,” she said reluctantly. The way they had died had been big news, a major part of their story and Americana folklore. To have them found shot by mysterious, anonymous co-conspirators could have ripple effects.

“We’ll take him,” he promised. She nodded, and he put a hand on her back to guide her into the house.

Lucy convinced Bonnie to let her do the cooking, as a thank-you for letting them stay. It gave her a way to stay away from Clyde until she’d gotten her temper under control, and she was pretty sure she could muddle through thanks to Steve. His body had struggled to adjust to the preservatives, additives and dyes common in modern food, and they had done a lot of cooking and baking from scratch, first in his on-base SHIELD apartment and then at hers. Lucy had never been much of a cook and naturally, there had been much Googling and a lot of discussion of changes in technology in the kitchen, and the ways that Steve had accomplished the same tasks. It also gave the others a headstart with the alcohol. Lucy could hold her own, but she was small and she and Castle obviously needed to be as sober as possible to con or steal or force the key from Bonnie.

Bonnie had been sitting in Clyde’s lap since they’d arrived, the two alternately making out and chatting with Castle, though Bonnie occasionally called over to Lucy. They drank steadily, with Castle playing along as much as he had to and bullshitting about armed robberies he’d committed. Probably bullshit. Lucy kept half an ear out just in case. Despite herself, she felt her nerves rising. What if she blew it? Looking over to find Castle watching her was comforting, like having a safety net, but that was almost worse. She had to her head in the game and keep Castle at an arm’s length.

When Lucy was nearly finished, Castle ambled over, leaning close. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she replied, but unconvincingly. “The con is … not my strength,” she admitted. “And Clyde….” The drunker he got, the more loose with the guns, and his underlying anger wasn’t going away.

“Yeah,” Castle agreed quietly.

“What are you comfortable with, PDA wise?” she asked.

“Whatever you want,” he said.

“Just because you’re a guy doesn’t mean you can’t have limits,” she whispered.

“I’m twice your size and Special Forces trained,” he pointed out. “That’s not nothing. And you think I’m a terrorist. I’ll follow your lead.”

“Fine. You can take those,” she said, nodding at two of the plates. It shouldn’t have felt like a dare. It was stupid to let it get to her. But Lucy wasn’t always as smart as people liked to see her as. She sat on Castle’s lap as casually as she could manage, mimicking the other couple.

It was surprisingly comfortable, cuddling with a terrorist. Part of it was probably that she’d missed this kind of casual intimacy. The other was that (concerningly) her instincts kept telling her that Castle was on the level.

And the third part was of course that she started drinking. Historians could be a hard-drinking lot and Lucy’s size put her at a disadvantage, so she knew the tricks. She’d been snacking and hydrating as she cooked. She made sure to eat her meal, took only small sips. And she reached for the bottle often, topping up her and Castle’s glasses when they were only half empty. Bonnie and Clyde would only remember her pouring, leaving the impression that they were drinking more than they were.

She asked about the ornate gold key, admiring it. Bonnie gave her a closer look, although she wouldn’t take it off – not ever, she said, and Lucy traded a look with Castle.

“Where’d you get it?” she asked Clyde. “What does it open?” Castle’s hand on her thigh tightened in a silent warning. To tread carefully with Clyde or to stop gathering intel, she didn’t know.

“Somethin’ old,” he said, shrugging. “Stole it from Henry Ford. I wrote him a letter, you know. Told him he makes a damn fine machine, and I always steal Fords when I can.”

“I’m sure he appreciates that,” Lucy murmured.

He’d gotten Bonnie the key since she already had a ring – from her husband, Lucy had already known.

“Well let’s see _your_ ring,” she said to Lucy. Lucy leaned over obligingly for Bonnie to make approving noises. “How’d you two meet?” she asked. Clyde was twirling a Colt 1911 pistol, safety off, and Lucy blanked hard, the silence drawing out.

“I was in the park,” Castle cut in. “Sitting under a tree with my guitar. Wasn’t very good,” he admitted. “I was just – I was trying to learn this song. And I’m struggling, you know? Struggling away with it. I’m singing out loud like an asshole, you know? And then I see her. She smiled at me. I was done, man. She had me. She says to me, ‘Hey, buddy, you know anything else? Because we’re sick of hearing you butcher this one.’ I go beet red, and I look up, and I see this gang of her friends. And they’re all laughing their asses off.” Lucy had twisted to watch Frank’s face as he told the story, eyes far away, voice soft, and knew that it wasn’t a lie. His eyes met hers, and he forced a smile, turning back to the other couple. “I told her I don’t take requests,” he finished, agony just under the surface of his words and face.

The smile was like a dagger to Lucy’s heart, and she leaned in to kiss him. It was light, and swift, and chaste, but she lingered there, forehead against his, breath mingling, between him and the criminals until his hands on her sides squeezed gently. Bonnie was watching with a soft smile on her face and Lucy tried to focus on the satisfaction of having fooled her instead of the emotional turmoil she was feeling. Just because they shared a loss didn’t mean that she knew this man. He was a trained killer, and just because her favourite uncles had been men with flags on their chest and blood on their hands didn’t mean that she could trust him.

Her uncles. Hmm.

Even despite the tiny sips and misleading refills, she was well on her way to tipsy when Clyde started to give her a hard time about guns again.

“We were only supposed to be casing the place,” she protested. “I can use a gun. Bet I could strip that thing faster than you.” She pointed to the Colt he still played with. She tapped the table, having cleared the plates when they finished eating. “Unless you’re scared of losing to a dame.”

Toxic masculinity – always reliable. Clyde put the pistol on the table.

“You got two of them, right?” she asked. Frank was tense underneath her as Bonnie moved to a different chair and Clyde produced a second pistol. She stood to clear it, taking a look at the gun. It wasn’t one she was overly familiar with, but this would be just like riding a bike. She hoped.

“Ready?” she asked. Frank stood next to the table, watching her with a frown on his lips and a question in his eyes. She winked at him. “I’ve got this, darling,” she said.

Bonnie called the start, and Lucy took the gun apart with steady hands. Clyde’s were faster, and he smirked at her.

“Rifle’s my weapon,” she groused. She’d never been a particularly good loser and she didn’t see why she ought to start now. She took a slug of the moonshine they were drinking. “You like the Browning Automatic, right?” she nodded to the two propped nearby, almost in arm’s reach. “That’s a fine weapon. Let’s do that one.”

“This ain’t all that fun for me, sweetheart,” Clyde drawled.

“Well let’s make it a little more interesting,” she replied. “A thousand bucks.”

“You’re on.” Clyde retrieved the weapons, and again, Lucy cleared hers. Frank shifted on his feet, moving alongside the table. Bonnie called the start again, and this time, Lucy didn’t hold back. She finished with time to spare, and Frank took the opportunity that Clyde’s shock gave him to pull his guns.

“Everyone stay calm,” he said, voice level. Lucy stood and backed away from the table as Clyde turned murderous eyes on Frank. Lucy wasn’t particularly worried now. There were more guns at the back of the room, next to the bed, and right by the door, but nothing that Clyde could get to, and Frank was more than capable of handling him if he took a swing. She sidled a little closer to Bonnie. She was confident that she could take the younger woman in a fight if necessary but the younger woman just turned betrayed eyes on her.

She rifled through the room quickly, coming up with some rope to tie the outlaw couple up with. She did Clyde first, Frank unhappy with her being so close, but they kept the exchange to angry words.

“I’m sorry, Bonnie,” she said, when she took the key off. She meant it, too. For all that she’d said, it was hard to be ambivalent about the imminent death of the vivacious, charismatic girl.

“Bitch,” Bonnie said, tears in her eyes. “Just shoot us. I ain’t goin’ to jail.”

“We’re not goin’ to the law,” Lucy promised. “What am I gonna do, collect the reward? I got no love for policemen, just pretty things.” The ropes were well-tied enough to keep Frank and Lucy from getting shot in the back, but they’d wriggle out in an hour or two. Quicker, if one of them could break their chair. Lucy and Frank backed out and Lucy looped the key over her own neck, crouching in the dirt to offer her hand to the dog to sniff. She could just see his tail wagging in the light of the moon, but she could hear it beating against the ground as well. She scratched his ears gently as Frank produced a knife and cut the dog free, letting him sniff Frank, too, before he scooped him up. Lucy got the door and Frank put him in her lap, where he licked her fingers, her face, and wriggled until she was cradling him like a baby. He then promptly fell deeply asleep, head heavy on her shoulder. Frank drove away slowly with only the light of the moon to go by. Lucy ran her fingers over the key once the dog was asleep, trying to find some clue, memorise it.

“So how’d you do that?” Frank asked finally.

“You know that my dad – the Colonel – he was Army. Rangers lead the way,” she said dryly.

Frank scoffed.

“When they weren’t on mission, my two uncles spent most of their time with me. I was like a mascot. It was funny to teach me to do stuff and parade me around in front of the other soldiers. And I loved it, of course. Made me feel special. And it was a good way to make friends or bring an asshole down a peg or two. If guys like their Sarge, it’s a good bonding activity to watch a seven year old whup him. Or we’d find the biggest, dumbest Black Forest goon that Murdock could bait. They made a lot of money off it, I think. I wasn’t keeping track at the time, but I think it was a pretty good side-hustle. They definitely bought me all the ice cream I could eat.”

“Black Forest guys don’t hang around on domestic bases,” Frank pointed out.

“Mom was CIA. I guess they were both good enough at their jobs that sometimes rules got bent. And there were always kids around.”

“Locals?”

“Nothing bad ever happened to me playing soccer,” she replied. “I was with a nanny the time I got kidnapped.”

“Kidnapped?”

“That wasn’t in the journal?” she asked.

“I told you I wasn’t talking about the journal any more today. Where am I taking you?” Castle asked.

Lucy tried to put the map together in her head and remembered, when it was harder than it should have been, that she was tipsy. And definitely talking too much, offering him too much intel. She hadn’t even been digging about the journal on purpose. She gave him directions, and he pulled off to the side of the road when she told him to let her out but refused to let her leave in the dark. They both pretended to nap until the pre-dawn light filtered in, and Lucy put her hand on the door and hesitated.

“What about him?” she asked, indicating the dog. He was still asleep – he knew instinctively, for the first time in a long time, that he was safe. “My apartment doesn’t allow animals, but I can take him to a shelter.”

“I can handle it,” he said.

“Today doesn’t change anything.” What she meant was that she’d still try to stop him, but the words tasted like a lie. He nodded, expression impossible to read in the low light, and she opened the door and eased the dog back onto the seat. He woke up, tail wagging and trying to lick her face again.

“Good boy,” she said. “Frank’s going to take care of you. Be good.” He let out a little whine, but curled up against Frank’s side, head on his thigh.

“Lucy,” Frank said, when she was out of the car.

“Yes?” Her stomach turned over. Did she have butterflies?

“The key.”

Oh, right. She handed it over. In return, he offered her one of the Berettas.

“In case you find trouble. Sounds like you’ve got a knack for it.”

She took the gun and nodded.

“See you around, Lucy.”

“See you around, Frank.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank’s story of meeting his wife is from The Punisher.
> 
> I'd love to hear your questions, comments, predictions, favourite lines or other feedback!


	6. Between all the bleeding and fighting I've been reading and writing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You think SHIELD isn’t telling you everything,” Rhodey said.  
> Lucy shrugged one shoulder, reluctant to flat out say that to a military man she barely knew.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In exciting news, not one but TWO people have agreed to beta this fic! I am incredibly grateful to slightlyinsanebean and creativecreed.
> 
> I briefly reference another time travel show called Travelers. In that, people are sent to prevent climate change from rendering the planet unlivable via overwriting the consciousness of a person who is about to die. They use their future knowledge to avert the death (walk away from the fight, don’t inject the heroin, etc) and are then supposed to live the life of the person whose body they took over, with the goal of that person’s spouse/family/friends never knowing that their loved one is a completely different person.

Tony had fallen asleep in his seat, a notebook with engineering sketches laid out in front of him.

“Tony?” she said, laying a hand on his shoulder. He started violently and she held up her hands palm out, finger carefully held away from the trigger of the gun.

“Where’d you get that?” he asked.

“Castle. May I?” she pointed at the notebook and pencil. He nodded cautiously, and she flipped to a clean page and sketched the key as best she could.

“How’d it go?”

“He has the key,” she said. “We left Bonnie and Clyde tied up, but with plenty of time left to get loose and meet their fate. Do you want to go check up on it, or just get out of here?”

He got up to close the door. “He didn’t, like-”

“I’m fine.”

“Cause we kind of realised that maybe sending you in to play the girlfriend of a guy who killed his wife and kids was like, not the best plan ever?”

Lucy was quiet for a second. “I’m not sure he did that. And anyway, he doesn’t just need me alive, he needs me on his side.”

“We didn’t tell SHIELD about the journal,” Tony said. “Just so you know.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said, because _why_ seemed ungrateful in the face of so much trust.

“Whatever. Don’t be a girl about it.”

Lucy rolled her eyes and buckled in.

Foggy and Steve were waiting when they flashed forward to the present, standing around Felicity’s computer monitor despite it being 1 am. There were hugs all around and then the guy from SHIELD – Sitwell? - was trying to hustle Lucy into a debrief.

“I need some things first,” she said, planting her feet.

“You have demands?”

“Foggy needs a legal id and to get back to school.”

“We don’t do university acceptance,” Sitwell said.

“Well when I was recruited by Director Fury he made it clear that he had contacts at a number of universities,” Lucy retorted, utterly shameless about dropping the name.

“Already handled it,” Tony said.

“We need a place to stay,” she added. Unless the fiancé thing had changed, taking Foggy back to her place would be a problem.

“I can do that, too,” Tony added. “Well, you know, Pepper can do it. Whatever.”

“We need an expense account. I’m tired of counting on you scrambling before every mission for clothes and shoes and ids. I want to get ahead of things, hire someone to curate a collection of costumes proactively.”

“It’ll take time to get clearance for that.”

“Or I can give Pepper a charge card,” Tony said.

“I also need everything you have on Frank Castle. His file, including an unredacted service record, the investigation of his family’s deaths, his known associates and their files, a social media dump of the whole family, everything.”

“That I can’t do,” Tony said. “Well-”

“You’re not cleared,” Sitwell said.

“Get me clearance,” Lucy said. “I am expected to predict what he’s going to do and most of the information I need to do that isn’t in the historical record, it’s in his file. I need to know who I’m dealing with.”

“You’re dealing with a murderer. And the job is to kill him, not prance around in costumes analysing his psyche.”

“This technology exists now. How long do you really think it’ll stay secret?” Lucy asked. “Someone else will eventually create it, even independently of Stark. The fashion of the 1930s isn’t going to change, not unless we let it. Having costumes on hand-”

“I can’t get the file.”

“Then get me on the phone with Director Fury,” Lucy said. “And I’ll explain to him why I need intel on our primary target, since you’ve apparently never run an op before!”

“What’s going on?” Hill asked. Lucy was a little surprised she was onsite at all rather than at home, given the hour.

“I need Frank Castle’s file if you want me to do this job,” Lucy explained, folding her arms.

“I’ll put the authorisation in motion. Now, we need to debrief.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucy said crisply.

She gave it verbally, a recounting of the events of both missions, and then answers to follow-up questions. She mentioned that Castle was trying to convert her, but nothing about the journal.

“Why you?” Sitwell asked.

Lucy hesitated. “I’m not the inventor of the time machine. I’m not a soldier. I’m just a history professor with a father who’s spent more than half of my life estranged from me on account of being a fugitive from the American government. Maybe he thinks I’m the weak link.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Sitwell said.

Hill had been sitting in, leaning back in her chair but showing no visible reaction to anything Lucy said. “Jasper,” she said, and Sitwell got back on track.

Finally Lucy was allowed to leave. She wasn’t sure where she’d be going, but a tall, sleek strawberry blonde woman was waiting for her.

“I’m Ms. Potts,” she said. “I’m Tony Stark’s assistant. He asked me to set up an apartment for you.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Lucy replied. The woman held a clipboard and a pen out.

“Sign here,” she requested.

Lucy scanned the document. “Excuse me?” she sputtered.

“It’s for the apartment.”

“It says I will _own_ the apartment,” Lucy said.

“That was Mr. Stark’s wish,” Potts said.

“Look, I thought he’d find a hotel. Probably one I couldn’t afford, and probably he’d pay until I could figure out something else, but – this is here in Stark Tower, this is – this is _millions_ of dollars, I can’t accept this! I just need somewhere for my brother and I to stay.”

Lucy hadn’t thought of the sleek woman as being particularly cold or hard, but she undeniably softened and warmed, smiling at her. “Sign the document,” she urged. “Tony – he doesn’t know how to express affection or say he’s sorry except this. It’s throwing money at the problem, but it’s also – he likes to take care of people. He’ll never notice the money, but he’ll be hurt if you decline his offer,” Potts added, nudging the clipboard.

With a sigh, Lucy signed. Maybe the timeline would change again and it would all go away, anyway. And she could always give it back when they’d settled this.

“Your brother is already upstairs and he made a list for grocery delivery. I also need you to sign here.” She flipped the page to an employment contract with Stark Industries. Lucy had another minor heart attack at the salary on that, but she signed it anyway. “Wonderful,” she said. “I’ll get that all squared away. Here’s my card, if you have any specific requests for the costume designer. And she’ll need your measurements.”

“For the most part, the clothes don’t need to be tailored too closely,” Lucy said, taking the card. “Thank you, Ms. Potts. I appreciate everything you’ve done.”

“Everyone calls me Pepper,” the other woman offered. Ah. The one Tony had said was less criminal than Lucy.

“I’m Lucy,” Lucy replied, even though she obviously knew that. Pepper escorted her to the apartment door, and it was only when she looked through the window at the pre-dawn light that she realised Pepper had likely been working through the night. Foggy was passed out on the couch, so she grabbed a nearby throw and covered him, then took a shower and collapsed into bed.

It was still morning when she woke up, but she knew she was up for the day and she could hear Foggy in the kitchen.

“Hey,” he said when she emerged. “Debrief went okay?”

“Fine,” she said.

“And the 1930s?”

“Nobody died who wasn’t supposed to,” she said. “Bonnie and Clyde did die, right?” The SHIELD officers hadn’t actually made that clear.

“About 4 hours after you returned, I think,” he said. “There was eggs and bacon in the groceries. You want?”

“Sure,” she agreed, stomach growling at the idea of bacon. She flushed when Foggy chuckled, then remembered the previous day. “So how was your day? Did they give you a hard time?”

“They debriefed me but it was okay. Mom’s alive, you know.”

“Yeah.”

“And you’re engaged, huh?”

“Oh shit,” Lucy said, scrambling for her phone. “Oh God Foggy, what do I say?”

“Do you have to live this Lucy’s life, _Travelers_ style? Cause that always seemed a little rapey to me. Like, near death experiences are a pretty good excuse for breaking up with someone. Way better than gaslighting some poor lady into believing you’re the guy she married.”

“I haven’t received any official guidance.”

“And you’re not asking?”

“Bingo,” Lucy agreed, taking a seat at one of the stools by the counter. “So I could just dump him, out of the blue, or I could tell him that I have amnesia and don’t remember anything – that would kind of solve the consent issue, as much as I can, if he wants to try dating. And it’s an excuse to break it off.” She chewed her lip and started typing out a text.

“What’d you decide?” Foggy asked.

She showed him the text that apologised, said she’d been tapped as a consultant for Stark Industries and they’d had an emergency, and that she’d had to fly out to Malibu.

“Probably the best you could do,” he said, shrugging. “Um, so – I went to Columbia, yesterday. To register and stuff. Stark got me in. And I ran into Matt.”

“Oh, honey,” Lucy said, sensing her brother’s discomfort.

“He hit on me,” Foggy blurted out.

That was _not_ where she thought that was going. “Oh. That’s … bad?” After some initial deliberately dramatic rants about the handsomeness of his freshman dorm mate the nature of Foggy’s feelings toward Matt had gotten increasingly vague. Lucy had never quite known if the crush had faded into platonic feelings or been smothered, and in case of the latter, hadn’t wanted to pry.

“Isn’t it? I mean, the Matt who actually knew me wasn’t attracted to me. Do you think the timeline can screw up someone’s sexuality?”

“I think sexuality is fluid and complicated and I’m not certain that our Matt was entirely straight.”

“I called him handsome when he walked into the room, he knew I dated Brian in sophomore year, he never said anything!”

“Hmm,” Lucy said, tapping her chin thoughtfully. “Why would the most Catholic person I know, walking out of a Catholic orphanage where he spent the entirety of his post-pubescent life raised by nuns, and into a small room he’d be sharing with you for at least eight months hide any homosexual interest?”

Foggy narrowed his eyes. “We’ve known each other for four years and three weeks.”

“And you’ve been the most important person in his life for about four years,” Lucy countered. “That’s a lot to risk. You didn’t want to.”

“Matt is wildly out of my league, Lucy.”

Lucy gave her brother a stern look. “Matt fakes charm for short periods of time, but he’s awkward, introverted and angry. He’s a disabled orphan. I guarantee you he has hang-ups that make him feel unworthy of being with someone like you who is funny and brave and universally beloved.” When people met her brother and his friend, they always assumed Matt was the biological sibling – both slender, dark-haired and not overly tall, but personality wise they had a lot in common too, at least when contrasted to Foggy. God knew that Lucy felt awkward and cold and unlovable next to Foggy sometimes. “And handsome,” she added firmly. “Don’t even. Matt obviously agrees with me, and this one doesn’t know you.”

“Matt is blind, genius,” Foggy groused, poking at the bacon so he didn’t have to meet her eyes.

“You’ve always said that Matt has a sixth sense for the hottest girl in the room. I don’t know why you think it’s different for guys.”

“Well we weren’t in a room. We were outside.”

“So you’re the hottest guy in the world?”

Foggy kind of glared at her. “Scrambled or omelette?”

“You choose,” Lucy said, shrugging and feeling better than she had in ages. She might not always be good at being a big sister, but she had her moments. There was a Stark tablet sitting on the table, as well as a notebook and pens that Foggy must have chosen, because they were her favourite. She retrieved those and got to work.

“I know all this stuff about him that he doesn’t know about me,” Foggy said softly. “Or know that I know. It’s like I’ve got the answers key to the test. I’d be cheating. It feels creepy.”

That was a bigger problem that Lucy wouldn’t handwave away. “He’s pursuing you,” she said, after giving it due consideration. “You didn’t go into this to trick or seduce him. As long as you are yourself – you know him better than I do, but I think he’d want you in his life, if he could make an informed choice. I’ve seen you together, and I want that for him.” After four years, Lucy cared deeply about Matt, and not just for Foggy’s sake. They’d spent Christmases and Thanksgivings and weekend days and school study nights together. “You’d have to keep the secret, though,” she warned. She didn’t really think he could, not forever, not every time they got drunk or when they progressed their relationship, but she couldn’t picture them without one another anymore. She’d deal with SHIELD if and when the security breach got back to them.

“I know,” Foggy said with a sigh. He plated the eggs and sat on a stool. “What are you up to? You look like you’re in General mode.”

“I’m sick of chasing Castle. I want to get out in front of some of this,” she said. “I requested his file…. He quoted _Hamilton_ at me. At the _Hindenburg_.”

“And you think that means he knows you? You’re a history prof. It could have been a lucky guess.”

“They didn’t call me until after he had stolen the time machine and jumped back in time. So how would he know me by name? How did he know to kidnap you? They said we can’t go forward to the future, so whoever gave him the information must have been going into their past and changing it.”

“Doesn’t mean that it was you,” Foggy pointed out.

“It’s possible,” Lucy conceded. “But from what I saw of the journal – the mix of printing and cursive, the way I form certain letters, my note taking symbols and abbreviations – it’s not impossible to fake, but it would be hard. And why? I’m no one. And I mean, if you were trying to manipulate me, how would you do it? Money? I’ve never been into flashy stuff, and if I really wanted to, I could get a book deal or speaking gigs about the Colonel on the conspiracy circuit. Ideology? Maybe, under the right circumstances, but I’d go for Rhodes with that play. He’s a loyal, mission-focussed soldier. He makes his mind up and follows through. I’m neurotic, I second guess myself constantly, overthink everything. Ego would be Stark, obviously. The way to get to me is you, and I don’t think that’s a secret. I believe that a life is a life, and it shouldn’t matter if they’re American or English speaking or Christian or white, you know that. Morally, I think it shouldn’t matter who I know, who I care about. But Foggy, I would have done a lot worse than stealing to get you back. I don’t know how many exactly, but I would have killed people. Castle had the best possible leverage against me, and he gave it up without even a fight.” _You’re one bad day away from being me,_ he’d said. Had he been proving it? Was that the whole point of the _Hindenburg_ caper?

“Lucy,” Foggy sighed. “I love you too.” He hugged her. “And I hear you. You’re not wrong. Just be careful. I can’t call Dad and have him break you out of prison.”

“With Stark’s money, you probably could,” Lucy mused. The team had become mercenaries after escaping prison. “Anyway, I’m going to make a list of costumes and period weapons to be collected. Do you have any interest in riding lessons?”

“Like horses?”

“They were the primary mode of transportation for most of the remembered past, at least for people Castle can blend in with. Castle’s stuck to more recent events so far – they’re easier for him to navigate, too. But he’s more able to prep because he knows what he’s prepping for, and if some version of me made a plan to kill America in the cradle, it would be easiest in the _cradle_. When we were first formed, or while we were a collection of colonies. And that’s another list I need to make. I need to try to game this out as best I can. And find someplace for self-defence lessons. Hand to hand never goes out of style, and it’s a good base for older weapons. You want in on that? Riding is tomorrow. It works around your class schedule.”

“I told Matt I’d get coffee with him,” he admitted, blushing.

Lucy smirked at him and he went back to eating like he didn’t notice. Foggy finished his breakfast and went off to collect his books and get to class. Lucy cleaned up, braided her hair, made the calls to schedule lessons, and then settled in. It wasn’t quite a spiderweb of red string, but she definitely had multiple colours of pens going, trying to predict the outcome of changing major events in American history, especially the second and third order effects. She had a shortlist of lessons for time travel for the boys, things like _don’t drink the water. No seriously, don’t drink the water._

In the shock and emotional turmoil, she hadn’t initially given much thought to the value of Castle’s admission (assuming it was true). She now knew both the tactical leader and the mastermind of the plot. She pulled out her phone (not Stark-provided – a holdover, along with another engagement ring, from the last Lucy, the lock screen a picture of her and her fiancé, and that was another thing for the to-do list, she needed to go through her contacts.) First, though, she texted Steve (already saved as a contact in the phone, their history appeared to be about the same) about the riding lessons. She was pretty confident that if Tony had wanted to be exposed to horses that he would have had the chance during his Richie Rich childhood, and including him had the potential to make headlines. When she mentioned plans to drop by the hospital to see Colonel Rhodes, Steve decided to meet her there.

She was a little on edge, expecting a call-out to whenever the lock that fit the key had been. By noon, she had decided that he must have already had access to it in the present, so she headed to the hospital.

“Knock, knock,” Lucy said, matching the words to the actions. “How are you, Colonel?” Lucy asked, taking a seat when he gestured at it.

“Improving, ma’am.”

“I’m so sorry, Colonel. You shouldn’t have been alone.” Lucy felt miserable, particularly in light of her chummy day with Castle. “And I should have made time before this to say so.”

“I knew the job when I signed up, ma’am,” Rhodes said. “Everyone knows that it’s a possibility.”

“I didn’t have your back,” Lucy said soberly.

“I didn’t expect you to,” Rhodes said. “No matter who your father is. I bet you’ve got some stories, though.”

When Steve got there, Lucy was telling a story about someone Rhodes clearly knew. Steve sat and chuckled along – the military, it turned out, hadn’t changed that much – until she finished.

“Can I ask you something selfish? Do you know how I was chosen?” Lucy asked Rhodes. “History’s a good base for analysis, there have to be SHIELD personnel who would have qualified.”

“I wasn’t involved in that. I’m Tony’s liaison on his military contracts and he demanded that I be brought in. Why do you ask?”

Steve had pulled the door shut when he’d arrived, and they were in a SHIELD run hospital. Lucy still glanced at the door.

“Castle knew who I was. He called me by name. He kidnapped my brother to save him from being wiped out by the timeline change. He quoted _Hamilton_ at me.”

“What’s _Hamilton_?” Steve asked.

“A musical,” Rhodey said.

“My favourite,” Lucy admitted.

“Why haven’t you mentioned it to me?” Steve asked. “Is it about the founding father?”

“You didn’t need to be convinced that history is cool,” Lucy said. Technically, it was a true answer, even if her thought process had been more along the lines of Hamilton being a poor, shit-disturbing orphan, angry with the world and constantly picking fights, who lost his best friend in a war, whose wife outlived him and devoted herself to his legacy and charitable efforts. Even once they were friends she wasn’t quite sure how to tell a guy from the 40s that a musical was going to make him ugly-cry. “Maybe he’s bluffing on knowing me personally,” Lucy continued. “But he did know I was on this project before I did. He kidnapped Foggy before he jumped back in time.”

“You think SHIELD isn’t telling you everything,” Rhodey said.

She shrugged one shoulder, reluctant to flat out say that to a military man she barely knew.

She left the hospital in time to arrive at the dojo as a class was finishing up, and she waited while the participants gathered their things and left, chattering or checking their phones.

She ignored the few curious looks she got and waited until there were only two women left cleaning up the practice room and laughing together.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m wondering if you do private lessons? My schedule is kind of unpredictable, these days, but this is a priority for me.”

The two women looked at one another. The Latina went back to stacking mats against the wall. The Asian cocked her head, looking Lucy over. “What’s your goal here?”

“I was an Army brat. Almost like the mascot of my dad’s unit. They thought it was cute or funny or whatever to teach me stuff, but I’ve lost a lot of it over the years.”

“That’s not really the style you’re going to get, here,” said the woman. “I can recommend some places?”

Lucy shook her head. “I didn’t just walk in here at random. You’re used to fighting people who are bigger and stronger than you and winning. You’re used to consequences if you lose.”

That got the Latina’s full attention. “What happened?”

Lucy folded her arms. “I don’t want to talk details, but – I don’t feel as safe in my day-to-day life as I did a few days ago.” They looked at each other, and she felt a pang of guilt at the assumptions they were obviously making. “Look, I get if it’s not a thing you guys do here. It’s cool. This is New York. Just because you were my first choice doesn’t mean you’re the only one.”

“No, I – I’m Colleen Wing. This is Claire, she’s a student and a friend.”

“Lucy.”

“I think we can figure something out, Lucy. I’ve got plans tonight, but I could start as early as tomorrow morning, if you want.”

“Sold,” Lucy agreed. They settled on a price and a time and Lucy was given a waiver to read and sign.

Everything was quiet for weeks, Lucy spending her time with Frank’s file and in the library filling in gaps in her historical knowledge until her phone rang.

“Did you know about this?” Sitwell demanded.

“About what?” Lucy replied.

“Stark took the Lifeboat out.”

“When?”

“December 16, 1991.”

“No, I didn’t know,” Lucy said. She had an inkling what he was doing, but it was easy to plug the date into Google and confirm it. She knew that Tony Stark had inherited his father’s company young, and Howard had enough connections to SHIELD that the date should ping for them, too. “Look, I’ll be there in ten.”

The Lifeboat was indeed nowhere to be seen. Steve was pacing and Felicity was seated at her computer, typing away.

“How’d he take it out in the middle of the day?” Lucy asked, waving a hand at the workshop. The staff wasn’t extensive – this project was on a pretty close hold at both Stark Industries and SHIELD – but there were upwards of a dozen people.

“He cleared us out. Said he was going to put a fourth seat in the Lifeboat. He likes to engineer in private,” she said.

The Lifeboat whooshed back into place, the first time that Lucy had witnessed it in person from the outside.

SHIELD agents caught Tony as he tumbled out the door.

“What the hell, Tony?” she demanded. He had blood all down his shirt, leaking from his nose and his ears, and all the inner peace she’d achieved with her planning and organising evaporated. She missed the days that blood hadn’t regularly featured in her work life.

“I had to save my mom,” he said. Lucy no longer remembered why Dec 16, 1991 was significant, but she had a sinking suspicion that she could guess. “I can stand. Well, I can sit.” He slid to the floor.

“What happened?”

“I killed the mugger,” he said. Mugger? “I – I shot him. And-”

“Who the fuck are you?” bellowed a SHIELD agent. Lucy looked up and saw a teenage boy climbing out of the Lifeboat. He put his hands up, looking scared.


	7. My father commanded respect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Did you know about this?” Sitwell demanded.  
> “About what?” Lucy replied.  
> “Stark took the Lifeboat out."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm late updating because it was a week, sorry. I think Saturday is probably a more reliable day so I'll switch to that plan. Thanks again to creativecreed and slightlyinsanebean for the beta read!
> 
> If there was a reason that I made Foggy a first-year law student I don't remember it, and I'm realising that the resolution/epilogue is way easier if he was going into his third year at the beginning of this fic so I'm going to go back and change that. It won't have a huge impact but if you are reading this as it comes out then yeah, it did say that.
> 
> I hope everyone enjoys both the chapter and a safe and socially distant Halloween!

_Previously_

_“What the hell, Tony?” she demanded. He had blood all down his shirt, leaking from his nose and his ears, and all the inner peace she’d achieved with her planning and organising evaporated. She missed the days that blood hadn’t regularly featured in her work life._

_“I had to save my mom,” he said. “I can stand. Well, I can sit.” He slid to the floor._

_“What happened?”_

_“I killed the mugger,” he said. “I – I shot him. And-”_

_“Who the fuck are you?” bellowed a SHIELD agent. Lucy looked up and saw a teenage boy climbing out of the Lifeboat. He put his hands up, looking scared._

“Bringing the kid back was the responsible thing to do!” Tony insisted. “Look, in my timeline, my mom and dad died in 1991 when a mugger shot them and a homeless kid who tried to stop him.”

This was her first time being left behind by the Lifeboat. As much as she hated getting into the Lifeboat Lucy _hated_ this more. The idea that her memories and mind had been affected by things beyond her control made her skin crawl.

“So you kidnapped a child?” Sitwell demanded.

“Wait, so you had Batman’s origin story?” Felicity asked. “Was I Oracle?”

“Look, I will deal with whatever shit you want to throw at me,” Tony began. Lucy’s heart sank. “But right now, I am going to go give my mom a hug.”

“Tony,” she said quietly, pushing past the SHIELD underlings to crouch in front of him and take his hand. “They died in a car crash. I’m so sorry.” She pulled the band aid straight off – no sense beating around the bush. She knew that.

“But I saved her,” he said.

Lucy nodded.

“When?”

“Winter of 1992.” She wasn’t sure of the date, but it had been blamed on icy roads.

He huffed out a mirthless chuckle. “Jesus. I didn’t even – that’s months.” He covered his face with his hands. Lucy hugged him as Steve started to clear the room. Then Tony went limp against her.

“Medic!” she called again, lowering Tony’s dead weight to the ground as gently as she could. SHIELD medics stepped in and carried him away immediately.

“Do we know how long he was in 1991 for?” Sitwell demanded.

“He disabled the alarms. We’re not sure exactly when he jumped, but he couldn’t have been there for longer than he’s been missing,” Felicity said.

“Is he going to be okay?” the kid asked, looking scared.

“I don’t know,” Lucy admitted. The medics had arrived and strapped him onto a board. She stepped out of the way and toward the kid. “What’s your name?”

“Peter. Peter Parker,” he said.

“We need to debrief the kid,” Sitwell said. “This way.”

“I’m coming with,” Lucy said, sidestepping between Sitwell and Peter and folding her arms.

“No, you’re not.”

“He’s not eighteen – right?” she confirmed. Peter hesitated, then took her cue and shook his head. “He’s entitled to an advocate.”

“I wasn’t aware you were qualified as one,” Sitwell said.

“I wasn’t aware you wanted to call CPS and pick a caseworker to find out that time travel is real and Tony Stark kidnapped a teenager from 1991,” Lucy shot back.

“Lucy stays with him,” Steve agreed, stepping up to her side with his Captain America persona dialled up to 11.

Sitwell looked between them. “Fine,” he agreed. “This way.”

“You stay with Tony,” Lucy said. Steve nodded.

Peter was wary and quiet through the questioning, leaning towards Lucy in his chair and looking at her frequently for reassurance. Sitwell softened some, though Lucy couldn’t say whether it was sympathy or an interview tactic, and Peter told them that his parents had died in a convenience store robbery. He’d been sent to foster care and run away from a bad situation, though he was sketchy about details. While living on the streets, he’d heard a mugging and went to stop it. Then Tony, masked, had swept in, shot the mugger and grabbed Peter.

* * *

Steve sat in the private waiting room they’d stuck him in. He had a lot of experience waiting – war was mostly hurry up and wait – but that hadn’t made him good at it. When the door swung open, he leaped up, but it wasn’t a doctor.

“Captain,” said Colonel Rhodes. “Thank you,” he added, for the nurse who held the door while he navigated the wheelchair.

“Colonel,” Steve said, standing at attention.

“Sit down, Captain,” Rhodes said, waving a hand. “Don’t make me think about outranking a national hero.”

“Yes, sir,” Steve said with a smirk.

Rhodes shook his head. “Preston said you were a little shit. You don’t want to know what Tony said about you. How is he?”

“No word yet,” Steve said, sobering. “I’m sorry that I didn’t-” he broke off, not sure what he should have done, but guilty all the same.

Rhodes rolled his eyes and parked the wheelchair. “I only knew Howard as – well, let’s not go there. But if he was anything like Tony when you knew him then I think you know there isn’t much you could do to change his mind.”

Steve tilted his head in concession of the point and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What was Howard like, when you knew him?”

“Cap-”

“There are plenty of people I don’t get along with. Most of them, honestly. The documentaries and the movies and the books are sort of full of shit, but Tony – he hated me when I walked in. That doesn’t happen much, and since I had a pretty good relationship with Howard, I’m curious.”

“They were a lot alike, and Tony wanted to be exactly like him and nothing like him all at once. He wasn’t very present, and I never knew him to say anything kind, not about Tony. Maybe he thought being hard on Tony would bring out the best. Maybe he thought that’s what being a man was, but – Tony built robots and weapons and skyscrapers and all Howard ever wanted to do was search for Captain America.” Rhodes shrugged. “And you walked in right after he fucked up. That didn’t help.”

“Didn’t help that I started scolding him, either, huh?” Steve said. “Howard and I became friends, but – I grew up in the 30s. That kind of wealth? Let’s just say I wouldn’t have made it through the Red Scare without a little scandal. I might have been a little hostile.”

“It’s easy to forget how young you are, in lived experience,” Rhodes mused.

Steve ducked his head and swiped at the back of his neck. “I want to make it better. I want him to trust me enough to come to me with things like this. Maybe if I’d-”

“Tony doesn’t really ask for help. That wasn’t personal, Cap. Don’t make that about you.”

Steve remembered a similar conversation with Peggy about Bucky and nodded. “How are you? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“They’re not sure I’ll walk again,” Rhodes admitted. “But Tony insists that he’ll invent a brace to help, and I haven’t given up yet. They’re taking good care of me.”

“If there’s anything I can do-”

“Just take care of Tony, as much as he lets you. The rest – that’s up to me.”

“Other than going after the 101st and bringing down the plane, I never really operated alone. I always had Buck and the Commandos in the field. It’s – it’s different. Tony and Lucy are great, but-” He hesitated.

“But they’re not soldiers,” Rhodes nodded. “SHIELD has Strike Teams and field agents who work on big ops together, but their top talents tend to become Specialists – trained to work alone, or with a handler, don’t play well with others. Hill came up as the handler of one of their best, so she might be more used to that model of doing things. But Tony said he was going to put in another seat.”

“He did,” Steve agreed.

“So get yourself a wingman.”

Steve smiled, Rhodes’s word choice giving him an idea. “I might know a guy.”

Pepper pulled the door open. “He’s out of surgery,” she said. “They say he’ll probably be fine.”

Steve had only met her the once, but she’d been carefully put together. Now the only makeup she seemed to be wearing was a smudge of mascara under her eyes. Her hair was in a messy bun instead of a carefully straightened ponytail, and she wore casual street clothes and sneakers.

“He will be,” Rhodes told her. “You know how stubborn he is.” Pepper’s shoulders slumped a little, but she glanced at Steve nervously. Steve politely excused himself, giving them the space to commiserate.

He picked up two coffees and headed down to the VA centre.

“Steve!” Sam said, recovering from the surprise quickly. They’d only ever seen each other on morning runs, but Sam had invited him on multiple occasions. Seeing the grin on his face, Steve felt a little bad about his reason for making the trip.

Steve had thought he was the only one around that particular loop of park in the very early morning, so he’d been a little reckless with his speed. Deep in his own head, only halfway out of the nightmare that had propelled him out of bed, he only noticed Sam the second time that he lapped him. Panicked, he’d stopped and tried to do his best imitation of his old asthmatic wheeze.

“Holy shit,” Sam had said. “You’re Captain America.”

“No I’m not,” was Steve’s knee jerk and very mature reply. “I mean – it’s complicated.” He’d been forced to explain, at least a little. Sam had agreed to keep it the secret and they’d begun a friendship.

“I’m glad you came, man. I’m proud of you.”

“You should let me tell you what I’m here for first,” Steve said.

“I’ve got group in twenty.”

“It’s almost an hour till it starts,” Steve said, checking his watch. Ten after.

“I have group in twenty,” Sam repeated evenly. He always made sure to be available before and after in case someone wanted to talk one on one.

“Alright, sure. So there’s this guy-”

“Love is love.”

Steve hesitated. Was Sam fucking with him? He was so earnest, but he was probably annoyed about the whole group thing. “Absolutely,” he agreed, playing the situation straight. Or – anyway. “But I didn’t mean it like that. There’s this situation I’ve gotten involved with, a rogue Marine turned terrorist. I work with a tech guy and a – uh, subject matter specialist. But a seat’s opened up, and someone pretty smart told me to go get a wingman. There’s no one here I’d rather go to war with, Sam.”

“And I will tell my grandchildren that I was your choice, believe you me, but – I can’t deploy again. I’m sorry. I’m out anyway. Working at the VA isn’t the same thing as being pararescue.”

“No deployment, and the op’s going through SHIELD, here in New Yorku. You wouldn’t have to re-enlist. You could just consult on this project.”

“We’re not at war with America,” Sam said.

“He is,” Steve said solemnly. “Look, I don’t know how it is these days, and I didn’t see the end of my war, but I knew guys who fought in the Great War. Some of them never _really_ came home, everyone seems to know that, but some of them didn’t know how, didn’t _want_ to. Some of them wandered through life looking for another war to fight.”

He looked at Sam very earnestly, without a shred of self-awareness, and Sam sighed. Captain America wanted him. Who was he kidding, acting like he was going to send a living legend away and spend the rest of his life wondering? And Steve wasn’t wrong. Some guys didn’t know how to give up fighting. Sam was at least self-aware enough to be in therapy.

“I’m staying for group,” Sam warned.

* * *

Lucy took Peter shopping – clothes, shoes, a phone, a laptop for school, towels, linens, furnishings and decorations for his bedroom. She grabbed half a dozen fiction books she had liked at his age, and a couple of more educational ones. Tv and movies were easier to access digitally. He was shell-shocked by the money she was spending and the amount of stuff they got, and she understood a little better how Tony may have felt when giving her the apartment and the seven figure “signing bonus”.

“Tony has more money than God and he gave me too much of it. You deserve to be comfortable, and I can afford it,” she said. “I’ve already tripled my charitable donations, if that makes you feel better.”

His quiet didn’t last long. He didn’t talk about major life events, but as she explained the latest tech, trends and happenings as best she could, he would share little stories. His family’s first computer. The Walkman his parents had given him when he had started middle school. He was bright and chatty by nature, and by the time they were putting the Ikea furniture together he was talking with his hands too much to be much help turning the bolts.

“Lucy, can I tell you a secret?” he asked finally.

“Of course,” she agreed. What was he going to say? He was a teenager. Fourteen, he had admitted. He hadn’t even reached the full-height-but-gawky phase of his growth yet, and there wasn’t even the whisper of an ill-advised patchy beard or mustache on his face.

“I’m a mutant,” he said.

She slowly lowered what she was working on to the floor, giving him her full attention.

“I wasn’t going to tell you – it’s why my foster parents kicked me out in the first place – but you’re being so nice so I just – just get it over with, okay? Do you want to take all this stuff back?”

“Of course not,” Lucy said. “Peter, I don’t-” _I don’t care_ wasn’t right. She tried to think back to the first conversation she and Foggy had about him being bisexual, but she had seen that coming and had time to prepare. Foggy also trusted her a lot more than this boy and knew her general stance on LGBT issues, though it hadn’t completely quelled his nerves. Their parents certainly hadn’t helped – if the Colonel had ever known, she hadn’t spoken to him since, and it was one of the many things that Carol quietly disapproved of but wouldn’t admit to having a problem with. “I don’t have any problem with mutants,” she said. “There are still people who do, nowadays, but I’m not one of them. Do you want to tell me what your powers are? You don’t have to.”

“I’m super strong,” Peter said quietly. “And I kind of – it’s like I know when something bad is going to happen. That’s how I knew about Mr. Stark. And my reflexes and balance and stuff are really good.”

“Is there anything you struggle to control? Anything you might need help with?”

“You really don’t mind, do you? This is really your real reaction?”

Lucy nodded.

Peter broke eye contact and looked down at the bedframe they were constructing. He picked up the tools and went back to it. A couple of songs on the radio later he commented on it, and then he was off once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that Peter Parker isn’t a mutant, but this behemoth is already too long. I don’t have time for all the wacky science experiment origin stories. Steve was an experiment, but I think most of the superpowered characters will just be mutants for simplicity’s sake. This is a bit of a short chapter, but next week we're back to time travelling as a team. If you could time travel, where/when would you be headed?


	8. Outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered, outplanned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Morning of the 6th of March, the Mexicans attack,” he said. “They’re repelled twice, but the north wall is relatively easy to climb. The remaining defenders withdraw to the interior buildings. Doesn’t take long after that.”
> 
> “The 6th? We’ve got that long?” Steve asked. It was only the 23rd of February.
> 
> “Bowie collapses tomorrow,” Lucy said interjected. “Yellow fever. Same day that-” she froze, and so did Sam.
> 
> She walked over to the nearest person. “Where is Colonel Travis?” she asked, grabbing him by the arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the first chapter title I knew I would use (they’re all Hamilton lyrics). It’s largely based on Timeless 1x05 “The Alamo”, though while I was writing my favourite podcast Behind the Bastards did a two-parter on Jim Bowie that also provided some material. 
> 
> This episode was probably the first that made me really mad about their treatment of race. Rufus (the pilot/science/engineering guy, who is black) notices some other black people and asks if they’re slaves. Lucy says slavery is illegal in Mexico. At no point is it acknowledged that the “heroes” of the Alamo were fighting to change that, nor do any of them treat Rufus with the slightest hint of racism, even when the show finds time to remind us that Lucy can’t do the talking because sexism. Not that racism is fun and something I want to watch, but erasing it felt very aimed at the white audience’s comfort/lionising the men who were fighting for slavery. Fuck that.
> 
> Jim Wilson is a character in the comics. He was Sam Wilson’s nephew, not his uncle, and he wasn’t from Texas, but Sam Wilson’s mom was killed by a mugger after his dad had already died.

“Are you sure that you’re up for this?” Lucy asked, frowning at Tony. You make a woman the legal guardian of a teenager for five minutes and suddenly she’s all maternal.

“I’m fine, my organs only melted a little bit. Kidding! Mostly. I don’t know, I wasn’t listening. Biology isn’t real science, it’s all squishy things and fluids.” Not like engineering, with machines and coding and – okay, there were fluids there too. But engine oil and grease. Good clean fluids. “I’m fine now. Can’t let you guys go thinking that I’m replaceable. So who’s the new guy?”

“Friend of Steve’s.”

“I didn’t think Steve had friends,” Tony said.

“You’re projecting,” Lucy said sweetly. “Thank you for Foggy’s id, but we’re going to need one for Peter. We’re going to homeschool him till the end of the year to catch him up and then he can switch to a real high school, if he’d like.”

“How is the kid?” Tony asked.

“He’s settling in,” Lucy said. “He really appreciates you letting him hang around the workshop. He’s a really bright kid, and engineering isn’t my strength. You should come for dinner sometime.”

“Ehn, maybe,” Tony said. That was a pretty long time to spend with nothing to do but eat and talk. The more time people spent with him, the faster they tended to figure him out. Except Pepper. Pepper had spent a lot of time with him, while he was in the hospital. And Rhodey, but Rhodey was already _in_ the hospital.

“Costumes, papers, you’ve got the history covered, I’ve got the science, and now Steve has a buddy for the bullets thing,” he said. It was almost like a real team, which probably meant he was going to screw it up soon. Him and teams never really worked out.

“SHIELD’s bringing someone in to teach us how to shoot.”

“I know how to do that.” Bonding time with dad and the ghost of Captain freaking America. Good times.

“You know how to load a musket? How to handle a gun without a safety? How to maximise your chances to hit with a gun that has no rifling?”

“What?”

“What do you think archaeologists are going to do when they find modern copper-jacketed rounds in revolutionary war bodies, hmm? I’m not saying that they’ll jump to time travel, not the first time, but it’s an unnecessary problem. A bigger problem is what if some clever gunmaker sees a semi automatic and gets to work making one a hundred years too early? What if a weapon gets stolen and left behind? That could easily be just as catastrophic for the timeline as whatever Frank has planned.”

“Then why doesn’t he just hand them out?”

“He’s not causing destruction for destruction’s sake. He has a specific goal, even if we don’t understand it. I think Castle’s spent enough time in warzones to know that you can’t control what people do with the weapons you give them.”

“Or sell them,” Tony said, sober.

“Or that,” Lucy agreed.

“You guys ready to go?” Steve asked.

“We’ve been waiting for you two slowpokes,” Lucy joked.

Tony stared at her. “Slowpokes?” he repeated. “Someone’s been spending too much time with Captain Swear Jar over there.”

She folded her arms. “Whatever,” she muttered, cheeks flushing.

“Hi, I’m Sam Wilson,” the new guy said, reaching to shake hands. “I’m the guy too dumb to tell Captain America to get lost.” Did Captain America hang out exclusively with hot people? Sam’s easy smile contrasted toothpaste-commercial-white teeth against brown skin, and he carried himself with casual confidence.

“I’m Tony Stark, I tell him that all the time.”

“He’s a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist,” Steve said, smiling like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“Move it, boys,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. Since Tony had backed her play with Bonnie and Clyde, admitted that he’d looked up her dead fiancé and gotten her brother and Steve out of there, she’d seemed more at ease around him. Or maybe that was just that he and Steve weren’t at each other’s throats for real anymore. She seemed like the type who took problems around her personally.

* * *

“Any advice?” Sam asked as he strapped in. The Lifeboat wasn’t as shiny and sleek as he’d expected, coming from Tony Stark.

“The trip sucks,” Lucy said. “There’s a barf bag under the seat.”

“Experience?”

“I made it out. Barely,” she admitted. She smiled ruefully. Sam had pretty good instincts about people, and they told him that he and Lucy were going to get along.

“What do you think Castle’s play here is?” Sam asked.

“What do you know about the Alamo?” Lucy’s voice changed, though he didn’t think that she was aware of it, as she slipped into teacher mode. She sat a little straighter and spoke more confidently.

“Line in the sand, everyone died?” Steve said.

“Americans fighting the Mexicans,” Tony added. “Hold that thought, we’re about to go.”

Sam had served in pararescue, but if he’d been a grunt or a history prof, he might have been grateful for that bag. It felt like his whole brain had momentarily been squished until it could be fed through the eye of a needle before being reconstituted. Luckily he felt no such effects in the rest of his body, as the sensation in his head was bad enough.

“You get used to it,” Lucy promised, although truth be told she looked a little grey too. “Comforts of home?” she asked, holding up a rucksack. Sam took a peek. It was like the most intense giant purse he’d ever seen the contents of. Water, mouthwash, toothbrushes and paste, a book about the Alamo, a flashlight, MREs, lip balm, moisturizer, hand sanitizer, first aid kit, lighters, socks, wet wipes, duct tape, a notebook and pen, toilet paper.

“Are you planning to move here?” Sam asked.

“That one stays in the Lifeboat,” Lucy said, shouldering a smaller bag that looked a lot more natural with her dress. “I figure if someone gets into the Lifeboat then seeing a modern nail file is the least of our worries.”

“The Alamo,” Steve reminded her, climbing down out of the Lifeboat first and reaching for her. She handed him the bag and climbed down herself.

“Mexico had a problem with Comanche raids in this area, so they liberalised immigration policies hoping that higher population density would deter the attacks. Americans were looking for more land and flooded in, kept coming even when Mexico banned immigration.”

Tony spun his finger in a circle in a ‘get to the point’ motion.

“Long story short, the people in the fort are trying to secede. They’re going to get slaughtered in a couple of days but it’s a textbook example of losing a battle to win a war.” Sam interjected.

“Taking Texas out of the Union would be a massive change to the timeline. I have no idea how that would play out to the present, or how he’s planning to change things,” Lucy added. “History buff?”

“I spent some time in Texas as a kid. You can’t help but pick up stuff about the Alamo.” he said. “My mom got killed in a mugging and I came out here to live with my Uncle Jim.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” There was more than empathy on Lucy’s face – she had some idea what that kind of loss was like. Steve hadn’t said much about her, but he knew Stark’s story.

“How would I fit in around here without a dead mom?” he quipped. Everyone eyed each other for a tense moment and then chuckled.

“Now I feel excluded,” Lucy retorted in kind. Not her mom, then.

“So what’s our story?” Tony asked. “Am I about to become a – you know - um?” He gestured vaguely at Sam.

“Slavery was illegal in Mexico,” Sam said. “Didn’t always get enforced when immigrants brought their slaves, but it was illegal.”

“So the rebellion….” Steve trailed off.

“Mexican Confederate War, yeah,” Lucy agreed.

“Funny how they leave that out of history class,” Sam said, smiling wryly.

“So my dear daughter, my servant and I decided to join the fight?” Tony said.

“Who am I?” Steve asked.

“I declare you man and wife. Go ahead and kiss the bride,” Tony teased, pushing Lucy closer to Steve, laughing as they both flushed.

“Let’s get this done, man,” Sam said, offering Steve a fist bump (and an out).

* * *

The Mexican army was closing in, and the last flood of people into the fort was more like a trickle, but they joined it. They immediately met a big man – pale, sweating, and reeking like a distillery – who introduced himself as Colonel Bowie. Sam was standing behind the others and watched Steve look at Lucy just as Lucy turned expectantly to him. Stark stepped smoothly in, explaining their cover story, and Bowie sort of nodded and tottered away.

“What do you think?” Steve asked Sam, looking around at the fort.

“No firing ports,” Sam said, looking at the catwalks that had been erected on the walls. It left the torso of anyone who was shooting vulnerable to returning fire. “The north wall’s weak. That’s where they’ll breach.”

“How does it go down?” Steve asked. Sam hesitated, but Lucy nodded at him.

“Morning of the 6th of March, the Mexicans attack,” he said. “They’re repelled twice, but the north wall is relatively easy to climb. The remaining defenders withdraw to the interior buildings. Doesn’t take long after that.”

“The 6th? We’ve got that long?” Steve asked. It was only the 23rd of February.

“Bowie collapses tomorrow,” Lucy said interjected. “Yellow fever. Same day that-” she froze, and so did Sam.

She walked over to the nearest person. “Where is Colonel Travis?” she asked, grabbing him by the arm.

A gunshot went off and Sam bolted toward it, Steve outpacing him after only a step.

They found Colonel Travis dead on the floor. The desk was clear of everything except spilled ink. Someone ordered Sam and Lucy out, and he stuck to her side.

“The letter, right?” he asked.

“I should have thought of it sooner,” Lucy said. Her face was composed but her eyes gave away the depth of her self-reproach.

“I should have thought of it too.”

“Not your job, but I appreciate the solidarity.”

“We’re a team, right? So you forge it, we make sure that the battle goes down right, and hopefully we get a shot at Castle in the meantime.”

“You make it sound easy.” She smiled ruefully.

It hadn’t been his intention to downplay what she’d already done and been through. “Not even a little. But it seems like usually it’s complicated _and_ hard, and today at least it’s simple.” Steve had told him what he could about the previous two missions, even if that was based more on debriefs than experience. If they went back to Steve’s first lifetime again, Sam would be the only soldier on board, but Sam’s lifetime overlapped with Castle’s enough that he wasn’t worried about doubling up himself.

“That’s true,” Lucy agreed. “Do you remember anything about the letter?”

“Something something … ‘Victory or death’. That’s about it, sorry. You don’t remember it?”

“There are some gaps to fill in,” she said, looking worried. “I’ll get it done.”

Tony emerged. “Get what done?”

A teenage boy ran past them into the room. “Colonel, sir. The enemy – they’re flying the red flag.”

Some of the men ran past them to the walls to get a look, like that would help somehow.

“I don’t understand,” Tony said. “What’s a red flag?”

She looked at Sam first, who knew what it meant, then around at the men now in earshot of them, then at Tony. “It means no mercy. No surrender, no prisoners. It means that if this fort falls, every combatant in it will be killed.”

* * *

Frank Castle was fuming.

“What do you mean, the non-combatants?” He demanded. “You shitbag-”

“Frankie,” Bill warned. Frank wasn’t exactly a smooth talker, so Bill was supposed to be the emissary of Queen Isabella of Castille, bearing gold and advice. That was forgotten, now, as his friend held him back from physically going after the Mexican general.

“This was your strategy,” Santa Anna said. “Slaves, women and children can carry letters, my friend.” He seemed nonplussed by Frank’s anger, and that only made it burn hotter.

“You’re a father!” he said, thinking of Lisa and Maria, thinking of the men in that fort who were prepared to die but had never thought they were making that decision for their wives and children.

“Frankie, we gotta get out of here,” Bill said. Santa Anna’s men weren’t so relaxed about his outburst. They were waiting on his order, but they were getting increasingly agitated. They might act on their own if this kept going.

“War requires sacrifice,” Santa Anna said. He poured himself a drink. Frank snarled a final insult, and Bill dragged him out of the tent.

* * *

Lucy looked as nervous as if she hadn’t known going in how this all ended, and Tony was missing a variable. He hated that. Steve emerged from the room and chivvied them all outside, somewhere they had room to speak freely.

“Red flag, huh?” he asked. Stupid military stuff. Tony didn’t like being the last one to know things. “Is that how it went, Lucy?”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But they had Colonel Travis. Bowie’s going to be useless pretty soon and honestly? He was never that useful. Travis and Davy Crockett hated him.”

“Davy Crockett’s here?” Tony asked.

“If I had to guess, I’d say right over there,” Lucy said, nodding at a man telling a story to more than a dozen onlookers, from children to men in uniform.

“You really don’t know anything about Texas, huh?” Sam asked.

“Why would I?” Tony shot back. He half-expected Sam to bristle like Steve had at first, but the other man just shrugged.

“Morale just took a giant hit,” Lucy said. “It’s one thing to sign up to go into battle. No quarter is something different. And the fort was never that unified. Travis only recently brought his men back to the fort – he had to march them out of here to prevent violence. He was given command of the regular troops, but the volunteers voted for Bowie, so they agreed to share command. Bowie and his men were known to sell their rifles when their booze money ran out.” There was real scorn in her voice, and Tony was reminded that her father had been military, at least until the court-martial.

“You just worry about the letter,” Sam said earnestly. “Want to do a lap of the fort?” he asked Steve.

“I’ll come, too,” Tony said. Steve looked surprised. “Engineer, remember?” Tony asked.

“It’s a good idea,” Lucy offered.

“Alright. Lucy, you’re okay?”

“Fine,” Lucy agreed. “I’ll get my hands on some paper and ink.” She glanced over her shoulder at the room that contained the dead body of Colonel Travis and shivered. “Fine,” she repeated, when she looked back at Steve. “A little worried about getting you guys out of here,” she admitted. “Sam might get out with me, after the battle – Santa Anna left some slaves alive, hoping to rally others to his cause – but you two?” she shook her head. “We need an exit, and I don’t have one. So keep your eyes peeled.”

“Noted,” Steve said. “But hey – I’ve gotten out of tighter spots before. We’ll be fine.”

“I don’t have an Arctic ocean handy,” Lucy muttered, arms wrapped around herself as she walked away.

“Tony, you and Sam go clockwise, I’ll go counter-clockwise,” Steve said.

Sam fell into step next to Tony.

“This about how it usually goes?”

“Usually is twice,” Tony pointed out. “Lucy can be kind of a killjoy, but she’s usually not this tightly clenched.”

“You haven’t operated in a warzone before,” Sam pointed out.

“That’s true,” Tony conceded. They walked past a church, built right into the walls. The Alamo had been built as a mission.

“Let’s go in here,” Sam said.

“You’re into this … sort of thing?” Tony asked.

“I think I remember something about the church. I think it’s how they got a messenger out,” Sam said slowly. 

“I’ll take a look. You get Steve,” Tony said.

* * *

“This’ll work,” he whispered, when the two men found him. They weren’t alone in the church, but none of the worshippers paid much attention to the men at the window. “Not for many people, but two or three of us? We can manage that.”

Steve looked out the window. “Alright. Hold down the fort till I get back.”

“Back from where?” Tony demanded. Sam looked annoyed, but not as annoyed as Tony felt. Again, he hated being the last to know things.

“We know where Castle is.”

“You mean, in the camp of a giant enemy army?” Tony asked.

“I operated behind the lines all the time,” Steve said casually. “Just – take care of each other, and Lucy, and I’ll be back soon.”

Tony grabbed him by the back of the shirt as he started to climb out the window.

“Wasn’t the entire point of him-” he pointed at Sam. “So you didn’t do this crap alone?”

“He’s right,” Sam agreed.

“What if you run your mouth and get into a fight while we’re gone?” Steve asked.

“Then I’ll handle it. I survived this long without a babysitter, Cap. He’d got kind of a saving people thing,” he added, for Sam’s benefit.

“Yeah, I noticed,” Sam said. “Age before beauty,” he said, gesturing at Steve.

“Just keep your head down,” Steve ordered, and dropped out of the window. Tony rolled his eyes.

* * *

They didn’t even make it to the camp before they spotted the group on horseback. There wasn’t much cover and Sam started doing the math in his head, feeling like a sitting duck. Infantry vs cavalry relied on numbers and defensive formations and long weapons and the cavalry not also being snipers.

“Rogers!” shouted Castle, and one of the buddies he had been arguing with threw up his hands and rode away to put some distance between them. He dismounted and used the horse as a shield, rifle up and bandana covering his face. Sam thought that was odd but Castle was approaching, and that took priority.

“You need to find a way to get the women and children out,” Castle said.

“Santa Anna lets the civilians go, after the battle,” Sam said.

Castle’s gaze swung to him momentarily with an intensity that made Sam wonder what he saw. “Not anymore,” he said, jaw tight with fury.

“You told him to kill kids?” Steve asked. Sam put a hand on his shoulder. He was vibrating with fury.

“Yeah, Rogers, I did that and then I decided to warn you, cause I’m a comic book villain who gets my rocks off bragging about my evil plans,” Castle said, voice dripping in disdain.

“Frank,” Hoyle said, stepping closer.

“I wouldn’t put it past someone who killed their own kid,” Steve said.

The grief and fury that passed over Castle’s face as his hands clenched knocked the breath out of Sam. He’d never worked with murderers, but he’d worked with guys who had hit their wife and kids in a rage and then felt remorse after. This wasn’t that.

“Just tell Lucy,” Castle said finally. “Let her decide.”

“I know Lucy,” Steve said.

“I know her better,” Castle retorted.

Sam caught Hoyle’s ‘my friend is an idiot’ expression right before Steve swung. Hoyle looked at him for a second before they both sort of shrugged and Sam dropped into a fighting stance.

Hoyle was bigger than him, taller with a longer reach, but he also had a prosthetic leg, and Sam was too good a soldier to ignore that. Hoyle went down, but he dragged Sam with him and they fell in the dirt. A bullet went whizzing by just above them.

“Fuck off, Bill,” Hoyle yelled. Sam took advantage of his distraction to flip them and saw Steve and Castle. Castle was giving ground as he avoided Steve’s big superstrength swings, but he was landing some shots too. Hoyle threw an elbow and Sam had no attention left for any fight other than his own.

Their third man fired again, and Sam felt the bullet fly past. His life was probably saved by Hoyle kicking him in the ribs – a pretty good shot for a guy with only one of his original-issue legs, Sam thought.

“Sam!” Steve shouted, and tackled him to the ground. Castle and Hoyle took the opportunity to get to their horses, who were pretty chill about the whole thing, and mount up.

“Get the civilians out,” Castle repeated, looking at Sam, before clicking his tongue at the horse. Hoyle’s horse followed his, bolting towards Bill.

“Can you get off me?” Sam asked, trying to keep calm despite the adrenaline of the fight.

“They’re still in range,” Steve said seriously. If he was a little less focussed on the retreating Marines Sam would think he was making a move – he was completely covering Sam with his own larger body, and their faces were inches away.

“Steve, move,” he said firmly.

“Alright,” Steve said reluctantly. “We _should_ get going before the Mexicans are drawn to those shots.”

“Did the serum make you bullet-proof?” Sam asked.

“Huh? No, just faster at healing.”

“Okay, that’s what I thought.” Sam nodded. “So how’d it help us for you to shield me like I’m some civilian?”

“I didn’t want you to get shot, Sam, you’re my friend.” Maybe he should have thought of that before initiating the fight, Sam thought uncharitably.

“You’re my friend too, Steve. I don’t want you to get shot. I—” He cleared his throat. “You’re not the only one who’s lost a best friend in combat. If I’m in this, I need to be your partner. You’re not the Batman to my Robin, man. I’m not here for that. How would you feel?”

“I didn’t mean it like you’re not capable,” Steve said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck. “I know you are, Sam. Lucy told me about pararescue. I’ll – like you said. Partners.” He reached out a hand.

Sam shook it as they walked.

“Partners,” he agreed.


	9. When they surround our troops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The fight is worth it,” he said, more quietly. “The cause is worth it.” You’re one bad day away from being me, he had said that first day they’d met. First for her, at least. Clearly there’d been more truth to that than she’d wanted to believe.
> 
> “Leave, Frank,” she said firmly. “I don’t want any more blood on my hands today.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this reads okay. Whether it's a stress hangover from the US election or something else, I've been super unmotivated to write/edit lately. This is a potentially triggering chapter, with racism, references to attempted non-con (and historically accurate attitudes about it) and a violent character death. I don't consider myself an especially gory writer. I don't enjoy reading or writing it. But I am trying to communicate the trauma that the characters are feeling. Take care of yourselves please!

“Finished the letter?” Tony asked.

Lucy made a face. “I’ve never had writer’s block like this,” she admitted. “It’s so much pressure. If I screw it up-”

“You won’t,” he said. “Look, I suck at the comforting thing, but I did the reading. You’re a good writer.”

“I’m alright,” Lucy said, shrugging.

“I went to MIT at 14 convinced deep down that I was going to say something stupid and everyone would start laughing at me,” Tony confessed. “Parents will fuck you up like that. Don’t take this the wrong way,” he said. “I know we’re still kind of shaky or whatever. But I’ve got one friend, and as far as I’ve seen, that’s one more than you have.”

She stepped back from him. “I have friends!” she said, arms wrapping around herself.

“You have people who like you,” he corrected, shaking his head. “When’s the last time that you trusted someone?”

“You think that Steve and I aren’t friends?” she demanded. As if she could distract him with a deflection. He’d invented that shit.

“I think he thinks that you are. But if he knew that your fiancé was my test pilot—” There was no way that Steve would be bantering with him, had Lucy told him the truth. He’d have punched Tony the first time Tony had had a go at her.

“We didn’t talk about specifics. He knows that a man I was engaged to died. That’s enough.”

“You haven’t asked me how.”

“I might not be a genius but I’m not an idiot. I have enough trouble getting into the Lifeboat as it is. I don’t need it spelled out.”

“Look, I get why you don’t trust me. But you should trust Steve. And take it from me? Learning to trust people doesn’t get easier as you get older. Don’t end up like me, kid.”

“I don’t distrust you, okay?” She looked away, a flush in her cheeks that had nothing to do with the Texas heat. “Look, I should talk to people – I’m acting as their voice here, maybe it’ll help jog something loose. You want to do some informal interviews?”

“Sure,” he agreed.

She came out of her latest building with nothing new to add and heard raised voices in the one next door. She and Tony had split up to cover more ground. She snatched up a rifle that was leaning against the wall just in case, ignoring its owner’s protest. She couldn’t make out the words, but the voices were raised and _furious_.

Having just been in a building, her eyes didn’t need time to adjust. There was a black woman on the ground and a white man with his breeches hanging open, Tony between them. The other man was waving his hands as he shouted about how Tony had no right to get involved, and in his right hand was a gun.

“Drop the gun,” Lucy said, levelling hers at the stranger. Gun accuracy was not great in this period. The rifle had grooves cut on the inside to make the ball spin. Like the backspin on a basketball or the spiral of a properly thrown football, this improved it over a smooth-barrelled musket or pistol, but even this close there was a risk if she fired. The risk to Tony was far greater if the other man shot him, though. Even the most inaccurate pistol would inevitably hit from point blank range.

“She’s not property,” Tony snarled. “Slavery is illegal in Mexico.”

“Well this ain’t Mexico! Now take your woman and get out!” He levelled the gun at Tony, jerking his chin at Lucy.

“I’m not moving, you piece of shit.”

“I wasn’t kid-” Lucy started.

A shot rang out.

Lucy panicked and dropped the gun.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” she muttered as she dropped to her knees next to Tony and applied pressure.

“He shot me,” Tony said.

“Oh God,” Lucy said again. Tony was losing blood fast, the wound in his stomach where she couldn’t use a tourniquet and the pressure wasn’t doing enough. “Get a doctor!” she snapped at the man. The woman behind her scrambled up and ran. “Stay with me, Tony,” she said. “Steve and Sam will be back soon, and they’ll know what to do.”

He moaned in pain as she pushed down harder. “Lucy, listen to me. There’s an aqueduct. It’ll be safer for Steve.”

“Just save your strength, okay? You can tell me after they fix you up,” she said. Tears dripped from her face onto her hands. She hadn’t even registered the tears starting.

“Aqueduct – to the river. Just need – ohhhh fuck – to make an entrance.” He sobbed on his exhale.

Steve barrelled into the room.

“Steve, tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do,” she begged.

Steve dropped to his knees on the other side of Tony, who looked pale, face screwed up in pain. He took the other man’s hand in his.

“It’s okay,” Tony said. “I’m a genius, remember?”

“Genius billionaire playboy philanthropist,” Steve replied, smiling sadly.

“No, there has to be something we can do,” Lucy said. “What if we cauterise it? That would slow the bleeding down, right? Enough to get him home?"

“Luce, it’s okay,” Tony said. “Tell Pepper – just tell Pepper-”

Steve bowed his head.

“Don’t tell her anything,” Tony said. “I wasn’t-” he broke off. His blood must have been pooling inside his body, or else the bullet had nicked a lung. He was visibly struggling to breathe. “I’m glad I came,” he said, fading but fierce. “I’m glad.” It was over quickly after that, and Lucy stared at the blood on her hands with disbelief.

“What happened?” Sam asked behind her.

* * *

“He shouldn’t have shot your man,” Bowie said. He was in bed, the scent of vomit and shit oppressive in the small, poorly ventilated room. He was speaking purely to Steve. “We need every man right now. But her father shouldn’t have interfered. It was none of his damn business.”

Lucy launched herself at Bowie and Sam caught her. She seemed surprised, almost like she hadn’t made the decision to move, and he could still see the tear-tracks down her cheeks.

“And I need every able-bodied man to defend this fort,” Bowie finished, dismissing them with a wave of his hand. Sam dragged Lucy out of the room as Steve’s voice rose in protest.

“He’ll be dead soon anyway,” he reminded her. “They all will. And us too, probably. Castle said that Santa Anna’s going to kill the women and children, now.”

Lucy stopped fighting, looking shocked. “F-Castle told him to do that?”

“He says no. I believe him,” Sam admitted.

She wrapped her arms around herself and leaned against the wall. “Tony said there’s an aqueduct that runs to the river.”

“Why in God’s name wouldn’t they have told us that already?” Sam huffed.

* * *

“Worst case scenario, we go in with the assault. We’ll find her,” Curt said soothingly. Frank glared. Curt knew more about war than thinking that was a sure thing, even with a team like them.

“Your girlfriend will be fine,” Bill groaned. He was stretched out in the sun, his hat covering his face. “She has to be, to go back and give you the journal, right?”

“Maybe,” Frank said. He wasn’t convinced.

“And hey – be careful who you shoot at, asshole,” Curt said, thumping Bill’s shoulder.

“When have I ever missed?” Bill retorted.

“So you were shooting at the ground earlier? What am I, expendable? I could fucking feel those go past.”

“You worry too much, Curt.” Bill waved a hand dismissively.

* * *

Steve, Sam and Lucy looked at the hole in the stone, not much bigger than a baseball.

“That explains it,” Sam said.

“If I got a sledgehammer or a pick,” Steve said, “As long as it held up, I could make a hole people could fit through. Then we just need the letter.”

“Are you sure that we should write the letter?” Lucy asked. The men turned to look at her in surprise. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her face flat and devoid of affectation.

“What?” Steve asked.

“The letter rallies the rebellion. They fight off the Mexicans and secede. Texas is created – as a slave state. Is that really a net good?”

Sam looked at Steve. “You guys have more experience here than me.”

“Yeah, but – well,” Steve said, ducking his head to look at the ground.

“When it comes to slavery, your opinion counts a little more,” Lucy said.

He hesitated, thinking about it, looking around the room, looking at the bloodstains that had dried on Lucy’s hands and dress. “America’s been failing to live up to her ideals since the moment Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence,” he said quietly. “You know and I know that it still does sometimes. But do you really want to see a world where we didn’t get a chance to keep trying? _The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather her ability to repair her faults.”_

“Alexis de Tocqueville.” Lucy nodded.

“I signed up to serve with a flag on my chest, Lucy. I want to keep trying.”

She nodded. “Okay. I’ll write it now.”

“You’re going to have to convince them to send the civvies out,” Sam reminded Steve.

_Fellow citizens and patriots, we are besieged by Santa Anna, leading a force of several thousand. We shall never surrender or retreat, and seek reinforcements to the Alamo, or failing that, to its cause. We here are determined to fight for as long as possible and, if necessary, die with honor._

_The promise of the American republic, and of our republic, is to repair the faults of older societies. Real heroes are not fearless men, but people who act in service of what they believe to be right. Not without fear or doubt, but in spite of it. We are all scared, but we are going to fight and die anyway, to give everyone else a chance at a future where American character has made good on the promise of America, a future where more people are more free._

_Victory or death._

_Signed, the men and women of the Alamo._

There was a hole at the end of the aqueduct that they could climb through onto solid ground, instead of coming out into the water and calf-high mud of the riverbank. The hands that pulled her out of the aqueduct were attached to a familiar face. “I didn’t want him to issue that order,” Frank said, looking pissed enough that she believed it.

It didn’t dull the humiliation she’d felt in her stomach, or the guilt of feeling betrayed and realising that she’d trusted their enemy, or the grief that threatened to choke her. “War has casualties,” Lucy said, bitterly parroting his own words back to him.

“Kids are different,” he growled, looking angry at her for even suggesting otherwise. He kept helping women and children out of the aqueduct, Hoyle too. “They didn’t send Stark ahead with you?”

Lucy flinched. “Stark’s dead,” she said, hearing how cold and flat her voice was. _It was my fault._

“What?” Frank asked, pausing with a girl of about ten or so in mid-lift. She squirmed and he put her down with a mumbled apology.

“He got shot.” _My father was right about me._

“I’m sorry you lost a friend,” he said finally.

“Yeah well, he wasn’t a kid, so it’s fine, right?” Lucy asked bitterly. “The Colonel told me I wasn’t cut out for the field. That I’d get people killed. I tried to quit after Rhodes, but I didn’t stand my ground. He doesn’t even remember me, so he’ll never get to say ‘I told you so’.”

“He was wrong,” Frank said gruffly.

“I froze!” she shouted, not caring that she made a spectacle of herself. “I didn’t pull the trigger and now he’s dead. I’m not a soldier. I don’t belong here.” She scrubbed her hands over her face. “I can’t pull the trigger on you, but Steve and Sam will,” she said bleakly.

“The fight is worth it,” he said, more quietly. “The cause is worth it.” _You’re one bad day away from being me_ , he had said that first day they’d met. First for her, at least. Clearly there’d been more truth to that than she’d wanted to believe.

“Leave, Frank,” she said firmly. “I don’t want any more blood on my hands today.”

“I’m sorry,” Hoyle said, as he followed Frank to the horses drop-tied a few paces away.

A woman stopped next to Lucy. “Ma’am?” she asked. “I’m sorry I – I’m sorry. Your father shouldn’t have died for me, for – that.”

It took Lucy’s lagging brain a moment, and then she took a deep breath, composed herself, and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “He thought it was worth dying for. If I’d been in his shoes, I’d have thought it worth dying for too. You deserve to be safe. Everyone does, even when the world tells you otherwise. If you want to honour him, just carry that inside you. Remember.” She hadn’t gotten a good look at her before with all that had been going on. ‘Woman’ was barely true. This was a girl, a teenager.

She straightened her shoulders and nodded at Lucy.

“You should go north, or south. Get away from here.”

She nodded. “Oh yes, ma’am,” she said, an undercurrent of _you don’t have to tell_ me _that._

“I’m sorry, I – what’s your name?”

“Loise, ma’am.”

“Good luck, Loise,” Lucy said.

“God be with you, ma’am,” she replied.

Sam and Steve carried Tony’s body between them, single file, down the long tunnel. Once they were out of sight Steve carried it himself, and Sam didn’t protest. He didn’t think about how they’d get home until they reached the Lifeboat. He climbed in first and gave Lucy a hand up, then took the body from Steve.

“Guys,” Lucy said, as she looked around the Lifeboat. “I don’t-” She sat in Tony’s chair, gingerly, looking at the controls. With Steve and Tony up in the Lifeboat, Sam turned and stood behind her. It felt like there were dozens of buttons, and he had no idea how to work any of them. She had never paid attention before as Tony spun dials and flicked switches.

“ _Dr Preston, you appear to be in need of assistance,_ ” said a disembodied male voice in a precise British accent. “ _May I pilot you back to the present?_ ”

“You guys heard that, right?” she asked.

“Yeeessss,” Sam said slowly, looking around. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

“ _My apologies. My name is JARVIS. Mr. Stark programmed me as a failsafe. I was only to reveal myself in the event that he was incapacitated and Dr Preston or Captain Rogers required assistance._ ”

“You’re a computer program?” she asked.

“ _I’m an artificial intelligence,_ ” he said, and though he couldn’t put his finger on why, Sam definitely got the impression that he was feeling a little tetchy about the distinction.

“I’m sorry,” Lucy said. “And … and I’m sorry for your loss.”

There was a short pause. “ _Thank you, Dr Preston. Now, would you like to strap in?_ ”


	10. Somebody tells me "you better hide"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You’re hacking SHIELD?” Lucy repeated.  
> “Correction, I have hacked SHIELD.”  
> “Already?” Lucy found that frankly disturbing.  
> Felicity turned to look back at Lucy, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder and putting on her best Elle Woods voice. “What, like it’s hard?”  
> “No offense, but the future has a lot more Nazis than I expected,” Peter said.  
> “That’s what I said!” Steve agreed.

Lucy climbed out of the Lifeboat behind Sam, Steve and Tony’s body and headed straight for Sitwell. “I need to talk to someone.”

“We’ll do the notification,” Sitwell said, looking at Tony’s body. It was his only visible reaction. Lucy didn’t want to think about how many people she would have to see die to be that casual about death.

“No, I – I need a therapist. I assume finding one on my own is a no-go.”

Sitwell looked her up and down thoughtfully. “I’ll find someone. They’ll be in touch by tomorrow at the latest.”

Felicity reached to hug her but she stepped back.

“Blood,” she said, although really she just couldn’t keep it together if someone was openly affectionate right now, and she had things to do. “Anyway, this isn’t over. Don’t tell anyone Stark is dead. Say he was kidnapped if you have to.”

“What do you mean?” Felicity asked.

“We have a _time machine_ ,” Lucy said. The world had gone cold and clear since speaking to JARVIS.

“I could go back and warn him,” Steve offered.

Lucy shook her head. “What if the effects are worse when you’re right next to the other version of yourself?”

“I can do it,” Felicity offered. “I’ve only ever used the simulator, but I’m trained as a pilot and I’ve been practicing on the Lifeboat mode.”

“We’re going to put together a full team, with tactical support. I’m not losing anyone else because we rushed into this. We have time. We’ll get him back.” She looked at Felicity, who was visibly emotional at the loss of her boss. “We will. I don’t know yet if changing the timeline or just grabbing him and pulling him forward will be a better plan, but if it’s the latter, it’s a lot easier for him to just Howard Hughes it for a little while and have Pepper and Stane think he’s been kidnapped than have to explain why his death was announced to the world.” Tony Stark was known for his public shenanigans, sure, but at the heart of that was eccentricity. It was a story they ought to be able to sell, especially with the help of Stark CEO Obediah Stane, his father’s old friend.

The blonde nodded. “I’ll talk to Pepper after they’ve done the notification,” she said. “She’ll help us with Stane.”

Lucy checked the time. She had three hours before she was due to be at the dojo. “All we have to do is keep fighting until we get the Mothership back. Once we do that, we control the timeline and we can fix this. We can fix whatever we want.”

Sitwell eyed her warily.

“Let’s get this debrief done,” she said firmly. “I have to notify Peter.”

“First let’s talk about Castle. Because your job is not to be time tourists, it’s to put him in the ground!”

“Yes, let’s talk about Castle,” Lucy agreed. “Tell me why a decorated war veteran suddenly snaps and kills his wife and child.”

“No one likes to talk about it, but you know it happens. The man you want at your back in war is rarely the man you want marrying your sister.”

Lucy pressed her lips together a little more tightly. She’d met the men that Sitwell was talking about – the ones who signed up because they like violence, or the power of having a gun on their hip, the ones who took to shooting people a little too well. They existed, but they weren’t the majority, and to say they were was an insult to basically everyone she’d known before the age of fifteen.

“No history of discipline issues during his service, no citations for excessive force, no one who remembered him off the record as racist or misogynistic, or of dehumanizing the enemy. He raised hell to get his translator a visa and he helped one of his men bring the company dog back home.

“His family? No history of calls to his residence, and the neighbours don’t report hearing anything that night – which means (A) they didn’t call it in, and (B) a suppressor was used. They were shot at close range in the bedroom, but there were signs of a struggle and blood in the kitchen. You’re telling me Frank had some sort of violent psychotic break and smashed up his own kitchen but had the presence of mind to muffle the noise of the gunshots and doubletap them, heart and head? And that’s not how Marine Scout Snipers are trained, Sitwell. One shot, one kill.”

“None of that is in the report. Where are you getting that?”

“Not from the detectives assigned to the case, that’s for damn sure. One of them died in a car crash when his brakes failed two days after his partner ate his gun. But station scuttlebutt says that SHIELD showed up to take the evidence, almost a year before Frank Castle set foot anywhere near a time machine.” She’d called around posing as a journalist and heavily implied that Hannibal had put her on to the Frank Castle story. Despite his legal status, her not-father still had a lot of friends around.

“You have evidence of any of this?” Sitwell demanded. It was on the tip of Lucy’s tongue to bluff that yes, she did, and if she disappeared it would go straight to the _Bulletin_. “Anything I can take to my superiors?”

Maybe she was getting paranoid. She took a breath. “Given that SHIELD was involved, I’m not sure that I trust the chain of command,” she admitted. _Not everyone at SHIELD can be trusted_ , Castle had said, and the evidence had borne it out.

“You’re outside of your purview and out of your depth, Preston,” Sitwell said. “Hand it off to me. I’ll work the case. That’s what I do.”

Too keyed up to decide if her unease was warranted, Lucy looked at Steve. He had his arms folded, his face troubled. She had less experience reading Sam’s expressions and he had a better poker face, but she assumed from his silence that he, too, had concerns. “I’ll put my notes in order,” Lucy said. They cleaned up and were debriefed separately. As they had planned, Lucy lied and told them that Tony had taught Steve how to pilot the Lifeboat. 

“It was just supposed to make Steve feel better,” she said. “I mean, you know what happened. Sitwell nodded. He had other SHIELD agents doing Steve and Sam’s debriefings, and she thought it was a little odd that the guy in charge would choose her instead of Captain America.

She broke the news to Peter and was prepared to cancel on Colleen, but he insisted that he wanted to be alone. It felt wrong but so did staying over his objection. They'd gotten a fridge calender to write all their schedules on, so he knew she'd be changing her plans. She made him promise to call her if he changed his mind.

Colleen didn’t ask if she was okay when she walked in, but she did ask if Lucy was sure this was where she wanted to be. Lucy felt guilty about not being with Peter, but she was sure. Maybe if she was better at hand-to-hand, she’d be more comfortable shooting when she needed to. Maybe she wouldn’t need to.

Peter asked for permission to eat dinner in his room. With him tucked away, she explained her findings to Foggy, Steve and Sam as they ate, a stack of manila envelopes full of documents and notes she had photocopied at the public library on the table. She had already dropped some off with a lawyer, addressed to Ben Urich at the _Bulletin_ , as well as the newsrooms at the _Times_ and the _Washington Post_ , New York’s FBI field office, and her Congressman and the two New York Senators. It said nothing about time travel, of course, just the initial inciting incident. It wasn’t evidence of anything specific, but it was compelling circumstantial evidence that something was not right.

“I want you to put one in a safety deposit box, somewhere I don’t know about,” Lucy finished, sliding them each a copy.

“I think you need to take a breath,” Foggy said. “When’s the last time you talked to your therapist?” Lucy had seen someone on and off (whenever she could afford it) since junior year of college. She liked her current therapist, a kindly older woman who wasn’t afraid to call Lucy out and had helped her to make a lot of progress, but even if she’d had clearance, she wouldn’t begin to know how to bring this darkness to her door.

“I’m not saying we’re going to need this, but – you know how I feel about contingency plans.”

“It’s one thing to have a backup. It’s another to plan a breakout of every prison in the state,” Foggy said gently.

“I’m not,” Lucy said, voice sharper than she’d intended, hyper-conscious of Steve and Sam’s eyes on her. “I just want to be prepared. I want you to be safe. Okay? It’s not – it won’t hurt anyone if we’re wrong.”

“Unless Castle kills you on a trip,” Foggy said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t let that happen,” Steve said.

It was on the tip of Lucy’s tongue to tell Steve not to make promises he couldn’t keep. She looked sideways at Sam, who flipped one hand palm-up on the table like ‘what are you going to do?’. Foggy looked comforted, though, and she didn’t think Castle was what she had to worry about.

* * *

Lucy’s relationship with her mother had never been stellar. She and Foggy had theorised that Lucy was a mistake and Foggy was a failed attempt to save the marriage, as neither or their parents enjoyed kids, nor had they been willing to adapt their pre-child lives. Carol Preston was a CIA agent of some reputation in Lucy’s timeline and now in this one she did the same job, just for SHIELD.

Lucy remembered being notified of her father’s death in prison, then having an old colleague let it slip that he was still alive and that it was a corrupt CIA agent who had set him up. Lucy had always been a people pleaser. She was closer to her father’s team than either of her parents but still always obedient when Carol had pressured her. But that day, knowing her mother had let her grieve for years, she’d snapped and they’d had a screaming match for the ages. Carol remained firm that she had done the right thing, that Lucy’s father was dead in every way that mattered, and that it didn’t matter that she was still a part of the Agency that had framed him.

Lucy spent the summer of her sophomore year tracking her father down to join him, only for him to tell her that she didn’t belong in the field, that she would get someone killed if she tried, that he didn’t want her there. Crushed, she returned to college without the intention of joining the CIA after graduation. She had been convinced to pursue further degrees and a life in academia by professors who knew her only as a gifted, somewhat distant student who didn’t go home for the holidays. She and Carol had barely spoken since then, though Grant had pushed her to repair the relationship before the wedding. One of them should have family there, he said. In the face of what his family had done to him, she couldn’t exactly argue that her mother’s actions had been unforgivable, but she had put him off with vague assurances that she would think about it until the Stark Industries representative had shown up at her door with the NYPD detective.

Foggy was a little more cordial with Carol but their mother had always favoured Lucy, and never hidden that she wished Foggy would be more composed, ambitious, and slim. Foggy put a good face on it, and deep down craved their mother’s impossible approval the way Lucy craved their – his – father’s, but he had enough sense to keep his distance, and had moved out to New York with Lucy for college.

From their text messages and call logs, this Carol and Lucy were more involved, so Lucy wasn’t shocked to see the text from Carol suggesting lunch that Saturday. She tapped out a reply about having a lot to do at work and only felt a little guilty about sending it. If she had to have lunch with her mother, not only would she feel a lot _more_ guilty about stewing in the fact that she’d trade Carol for Foggy any day, but she risked Carol getting curious about how weird she was acting and why she didn’t remember that time with the thing and why she had nothing to say about Bill.

She put away her phone for another lesson with Colleen and left aching a little in that productive kind of way. She walked home mostly wondering how Peter was doing after in the wake of Tony’s death. This was one thing he wasn’t talking about, though enough time had passed that he had started talking about everything else. The silence in the apartment had been unnerving, but the chatter had a hollowness to it that worried her just as much. She needed to get more serious about his schooling, too. They’d done enough for her to know he was smart and especially gifted in math and science, but high school science and math required a significant amount of accumulated knowledge, things you couldn’t just get through natural inclination. They’d gotten some placement tests and worksheets online, Lucy throwing a chunk of her signing bonus at the problem, but Peter required and deserved attention.

They got halfway through dinner, Peter and Foggy talking about music that Peter was discovering on Youtube, before Lucy’s phone rang.

“It’s Bill,” she said, making a face. Much as she wanted to take the excuse of eating dinner to dodge the call, her poor ‘fiance’ had no idea what was going on and she probably owed it to him to talk to him, at least until she broke it off. The boys went silent and she answered.

“Hi honey,” she said, and winced. It sounded so _wrong_.

“Hey, baby,” he said, and she winced again. She’d never liked ‘baby’ as a sexualised pet name, but Grant had practically insisted on it. He’d said that she affected him too much for him to watch his tongue with her, and she had stopped commenting on it. Now that she associated it with him she liked it even less, but there was no way for Bill to know about her alternate timeline fiancé. “How are you? Miss me yet?”

“Of course,” Lucy lied. “I’m really sorry about how this went down. I know it was kind of crazy.” They’d been texting, but it was the kind of bland ‘how’s your day’ check-ins that were easy to fake.

“Hey, I get it,” he said. “I miss you, though.”

“I’ll make it up to you. Cook your favourite,” she said, inspired by the food she was pushing around her plate.

“That sounds nice,” Bill said.

“So what should I make?” she asked.

He laughed. “That’s kind of a first date question, don’t you think?”

“I guess. I don’t know, something about being on the phone….” She made a face at Foggy, who was snickering into his fist.

“I can think of some things we could do on the phone. What are you wearing?” His voice dropped an octave, smooth as silk, and Lucy was sure her eyes bugged out.

“Uhh… I don’t really have that much privacy right now,” Lucy said. Foggy’s eyebrows went up.

“Get it,” he mouthed, shooing her away from the table. She rolled her eyes but did stand up.

“Mmm. Dirty girl. I guess I’ll just have to do the talking.” Lucy heard a noise in the background, like a thump. “Oh, sorry baby, I’ve got to go. Another time, okay? I love you.”

“You too,” Lucy said, hanging up with a sigh of relief and slumping back into her chair. “What’s for dessert?” she asked. “I need chocolate. I deserve chocolate. This is terrible and I hate it. Oh, God. What if I break his heart?”

“Oh, like it would be the first time. Remember Lyle in college?”

“That was not my fault,” Lucy said defensively.

“And Chris?”

“He was a student, I didn’t break his heart!”

“Lucy, every class you TA’d had a couple guys track me down to try to get to you.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I believe him,” Peter chipped in. They both looked at him. “Not like, me, I’m not saying – I just mean – not that you’re not – but it’s like – you’re like an improbably hot aunt or something. If I had an aunt. I don’t know.”

Lucy didn’t want to embarrass the kid more than he already was, but her heart melted at the thought of him trusting her enough to call her his family. 

“You’re done?” Foggy asked, reaching for her plate.

“Yeah,” Lucy agreed. Half her serving was still there, but it just wasn’t going to happen, at least not right then.

“I’ll wrap it up for later,” Foggy promised. They’d spent enough time around people with little food that they’d never been comfortable tossing it so casually, but they were particularly careful now, in front of Peter.

“Thanks,” she said. He picked up Peter’s empty plate, too. No matter what he was served, he cleared his plate and never asked for seconds. Sometimes he’d accept them if Lucy offered and encouraged him, but sometimes he didn’t even when he seemed hungry.

“So, I know you’re not really a science person, but how does time travel work?” Peter asked.

“I’m not sure,” Lucy said. “I’m curious too, but every time I asked, Stark just got really technical. I can’t tell if I wasn't educated enough to follow, or if he was just throwing jargon at me until I stopped asking. Which I get,” she hastened to add. Peter had bonded to Tony like a baby bird. “It’s a big responsibility and having one time machine stolen would obviously make him gun-shy.”

Lucy’s phone rang again, but this time it was Hill.

“Get downstairs,” she said tersely. “Bring the boys.”

“HYDRA’s back,” Felicity said, as soon as Lucy walked into the room, before she could ask why Sitwell was handcuffed to a chair.

“What?”

Felicity didn’t look away from her screen and didn’t stop typing. “Well, I guess technically they never left. Or something. SHIELD is full of them. Sitwell is one and he tried to steal the Lifeboat. I guess we were getting a little too rebellious.”

“Peace through order,” Sitwell said.

“Oh shut up,” Felicity shot back.

“Heil HYDRA,” he said.

“You know that your symbol isn’t a Hydra, right? A Hydra is an actual mythological creature, not an octopus with a skull head,” Lucy said.

“Actual mythological?” Foggy asked.

“Shut up.”

“No offense, but the future has a lot more Nazis than I expected,” Peter said.

“That’s what I said!” Steve agreed. They turned, and he was pointing at Peter.

“There are a lot more Nazis than I expected, too,” Lucy admitted.

“HYDRA is new, but the rest of them? I pretty much saw it coming,” Sam said with a shrug. He stood next to Steve.

“… Fair,” Lucy said. “Sorry.”

“What are we doing about this?” Lucy asked.

“We’re putting you all through, essentially, a lie detector test,” Hill said, bringing up the rear behind the two soldiers. “That was supposed to happen before you found out.”

“Whatever,” Felicity muttered. “It’s all over the internet.”

“Then we lock this place down until we deal with the problem.”

“What are you doing?” Lucy asked.

“Hacking into SHIELD to wipe sensitive files and protect undercover agents,” Felicity said. “Also downloading them to go through for clues about who the Nazis are.”

“We’re not Nazis,” Sitwell said.

“Yes, you are,” chorused half a dozen voices.

“You’re hacking SHIELD?” Lucy repeated.

“Correction, I _have_ hacked SHIELD.”

“Already?” Lucy found that frankly disturbing. She knew Felicity had been working on it before she entered the room, but even still.

Felicity turned to look back at Lucy, flipping her ponytail over her shoulder and putting on her best Elle Woods voice. “What, like it’s hard?”

The joke came out sharp-edged. Lucy liked Felicity, but she didn’t know the younger woman well enough to know if she could reach out and soothe or if Felicity needed the anger and betrayal to keep the pain and fear at bay.

“You Smoaked them,” Lucy replied, going for the joke instead. Felicity snorted, softening. Foggy and Peter groaned. Lucy turned to the boys. “How are you?” she asked Peter, bumping his shoulder with hers.

“Didn’t expect Nazis,’ he admitted. “But – I mean yeah, I guess I’m okay.”

“Foggy?”

“Nazis bad, but – I trust everyone else here,” he said.

“Okay. Are you running this lie detector thing?” Lucy asked Hill.

She was already on the phone and walking away. She gestured at the agent behind her.

“I’ll go next,” Lucy volunteered.

Once she was back, she pulled up a chair next to Felicity. Sitwell was gone, and Steve and Sam were playing cards with Peter. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Felicity glanced at her very briefly. “Yeah,” she replied softly. “You know, as much as it’s healthy to be okay when you find out something like this. I had relatives, in the camps, you know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We’ll fix it, right?” Felicity said. “Like you said about Mr. Stark. We’ll get the Mothership back and- wait, do you think Castle is HYDRA?”

“No,” Lucy said instinctively, the bottom dropping out of her stomach. She pressed her lips together and forced herself to take a breath and think it through. “If he was, they would have had the clout to cover up the murder of his wife and daughter. But if he’s telling the truth, and he was set up to look like he’d murdered his wife and child, you know who might have the power and inclination to do that?” she was processing as she was speaking.

“A network of secret Nazis.” Felicity said. “Oh, shit. So when he was going back to kill high level Americans-”

“They were HYDRA. But the missions predated the war. Maybe so did HYDRA? It’s an ancient name. Maybe the HYDRA we knew was just an ancient secret society surfacing? Or a front that they used?”

“And HYDRA got Sitwell put in charge of this project so that he could keep Castle from changing history and wiping them out. But then, we started talking about changing history for the better, and not taking orders, and so they stepped in.” They stared at each other for a long moment. It was thin – almost pure speculation. It felt right to Lucy, but what did that matter? She didn’t have any hard evidence.

“What can I do? Are you hungry?” Lucy asked.

Felicity looked surprised when she thought about it. Lucy well knew the feeling of falling too deeply into your work to notice your stomach growling. “Yeah, kind of. I’m not picky. And don’t tell my mom, but I don’t keep kosher.”

“I’ll get you something,” Lucy said.

Hill walked back over. “Castle was spotted. He beat a pawn shop owner to death. Homeland has agents on their way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The twist that probably everyone saw coming. And a plan for Tony! #RufusLives


	11. Something they can never take away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Abolition and the civil rights movement was the work of thousands of lifetimes. I'm not smarter than Frederick Douglas or braver than Harriet Tubman or stronger than MLK. Racism isn't something we can fix in a day. Not even April 15 1865."  
> "This job sucks. And the past smells."

Castle got away, and Lucy didn’t know how to feel about that, especially when Hill said that it looked like he’d been motivated by the pawn shop guy’s child porn. Beating someone to death wasn’t a go-to solution she approved of, but as reasons went it wasn’t the worst. It bothered her less than it should have, the idea of the guy who had sat across the table from her at a diner killing someone with his bare hands. Less than she would have expected

She had grown up around professionally violent people but had been mostly shielded from the violence itself. She’d been too young to really grapple with how to feel about it. She’d once thought she was prepared to do the same kind of job – and then been thoroughly disabused of the notion. She’d compartmentalised that away. Now, for the first time in a long time, she fervently wished she could talk to her uncles. BA had been the only steady penpal when they were in prison, and they’d written back and forth about his journey to identifying as a pacifist. He’d gone back to a life of violence after they’d broken out of prison, obviously and she wondered what he would say about this. She wondered what he would think of Frank Castle.

Foggy had been younger when everything had happened and didn’t remember the team as vividly. He’d never inserted himself underfoot as much as she had, worming her way into spaces that she wasn’t supposed to be in. Castle horrified him; she could see it. Felicity shrank from the violence of it. She was a little afraid of admitting her mixed feelings to either of them. Steve had killed Nazis in the war but he saw it as a necessary evil. Perhaps if Castle convinced them of his purpose Steve might reconcile the other man’s actions with his morality, but Lucy wasn’t holding her breath. Castle _could_ have called the police. If he’d trusted them to get the job done.

She didn’t know Sam well enough yet to guess where he stood, or to confide in him. He was a soldier, like Steve. He admired Steve. But beyond that, she didn’t know, so she found herself withdrawing into herself, despite Foggy’s worried glances.

With Pepper’s help, they cleared everyone and locked down the tower. Felicity agreed to crash in Lucy’s apartment, Peter insisting he would take the couch. They all stayed up a little too late, Steve and Sam included, arguing over which Disney movie was the best and forcing Peter and Steve to act as ‘impartial’ judges.

Lucy’s phone rang again in the middle of “Under the Sea”, and she hustled out of the room to answer it.

“Hello?” she said.

“Lucy, dear. It’s been some time since we talked,” Carol Preston said.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, reminding herself that this Lucy’s last contact with her mother hadn’t been a screaming match about the ethics of letting Lucy believe that her father was dead when he had faked his death to break out of prison. “What’s up?” How invested would academic-Lucy have been in HYDRA? It was still a huge political and historical shift. “Have you seen the news?”

“It doesn’t matter what politicians call themselves,” Carol said dismissively. “They’re still the same people they were yesterday.”

While Lucy generally believed in the whole _a rose by any other name_ thing, choosing to go by a name associated with _Nazis_ was a particular kind of choice made by a particular kind of person. Namely, _Nazis_.

“Why are you living in Stark Tower and lying to Bill?” Carol asked. Lucy started to pace in the hallway. _What?_

“What?”

“You are living in Stark Tower with another man and Bill thinks that you’re in Malibu,” Carol repeated.

“I’m working,” Lucy said. “It’s complicated and classified. I really can’t explain.”

“I am your _mother_ ,” Carol said. “I am the only parent you have. You can explain it to me.”

“Okay,” Lucy said. “You first. Why don’t you explain to me who my father is?”

“We’ve talked about this.” _Shit_.

“Not to my satisfaction,” Lucy said, leaning back against the wall.

Carol sighed loudly. “I was asked to evaluate someone for recruitment,” she said. “One thing led to another. That was my choice, not an order. I didn’t know I was pregnant when my bosses decided that he was unsuitable for recruitment, but I supported that evaluation and I wanted to protect my career, so I chose not to involve him.”

Lucy slid down the wall to sit on the floor. They didn’t evaluate people for recruitment as agents, not in secret like that. He was probably some kind of criminal who hadn’t even made the cut to be an informant. Involved in something pretty high-level, to involve the CIA. And the conclusion had been that he wasn’t trustworthy.

“I knew you would take this hard,” Carol continued. “Sometimes you need to just trust me, Lucy. For your own good. I know what’s best for you.”

“Yes, Mom,” Lucy said robotically.

“Get some rest, honey. I love you.”

“Love you too, Mom.” Lucy sat for a moment before dragging herself up. She whipped up a batch of chocolate chip cookies to buy herself a little more alone time before going back into the living room.

“You okay?” Felicity asked quietly as Lucy perched on the couch arm next to her and passed the plate of cookies.

“Mother knows best,” she said dryly.

Felicity, mouth full of cookie, nodded knowingly.

“Hey Luce, Sam hasn’t seen Tangled,” Foggy said, from an unrelated conversation on the other end of the couch and didn’t understand why Felicity broke down into giggles while Lucy finally cracked a smile.

* * *

The next morning, someone tapped on the door while she was in the shower and she missed the days when she didn’t have to worry about things like that.

It was Felicity, who skipped the pleasantries. “April 15, 1865,” she said, cracking the door to speak through it but not coming in.

“Lincoln,” Lucy said instantly.

“Yeah, Google told me,” Felicity said. She paused, and Lucy shut off the water and grabbed her towel. If she hadn’t, she might not have heard the soft question. “Were you scared?”

“I’m still scared. Every time I get into that thing,” Lucy said honestly. “Sometimes fear is what makes you careful. I’ll be out in a second.”

She was almost dry when she realised there was still shampoo in her hair and had to muffle the urge to scream in frustration.

* * *

“What’s Castle’s play?” Steve asked when she walked into the kitchen, braiding her hair around her head as she walked.

“He could be trying to stop the assassination. He could also be trying to make sure Lincoln wasn’t the only victim. There were other dignitaries at the theatre that night, and Booth was part of a conspiracy.” She looked at Felicity, thinking about their discussion from the other night.

“Be careful,” Foggy said.

“You, too,” Lucy replied. She hesitated as the others headed to the door. “Maybe you guys should bail. Just get out of the city, keep a low profile.”

“We can talk about it when you get back,” Foggy said.

She nodded and pointed at Peter. “Be good. Nazi coups are not an excuse for ignoring your homework.” He laughed and rolled his eyes. “Seriously, prep a report on Lincoln while I’m gone. That’s history I really need to know.”

“But you’ll be there,” he protested.

“I’ll explain historiography when I get back.” Lucy left and jogged to the elevator to catch up to the others.

Hill was waiting for them, looking like she’d probably been up all night. She handed Felicity a piece of paper. “This is where you return to. Don’t show anyone.”

Felicity nodded and tucked it into her bra.

“My brother and Peter-” Lucy began.

“We’ll be clearing everything out of here to bases we have control of or a safehouse. They’ll be waiting for you when you get back. That’s my personal safehouse. It’s never been in a SHIELD database,” Hill said seriously. “Lincoln?”

Lucy nodded. “Lincoln.”

“This one might be hard,” Hill said. “But the timeline has to be protected. Get it done. Please.”

Lucy nodded again.

* * *

“Are we considering how the HYDRA thing affects the Castle thing?” she asked. Steve and Sam turned to look at her. She'd waited until they were on their way into town, the safest they could be from listening devices, unless someone had bugged the costumes.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked.

“He’s been hinting that there’s a conspiracy he’s been trying to take down,” Felicity jumped in. She looked odd without contacts instead of glasses. Still beautiful, but a little wrong. “And now we know that there’s been a conspiracy of Nazis hidden in the government and spy agencies. So, you know. Maybe he’s not a bad guy.”

“He’s trying to change the timeline,” Sam said.

“He’s using violence,” Steve added. “Yesterday you thought we should give away Texas,” Steve argued. “Now you don’t want to save Lincoln? What if we didn’t just stop Frank from doing bad things? What if we did good things? We have so much power – shouldn’t we use it to make the world a better place?”

“Are you talking about saving one man or assuming that saving Lincoln would change racism?” Lucy asked. Finally something she actually knew like the back of her hand.

“You don’t think him staying alive would have made a huge difference?”

Sam jumped in. “Racism isn’t about one guy, Steve. You don’t fix it with a silver bullet. I don’t know the nuts and bolts of Lincoln, but I know that.” He looked at Lucy.

“There were people who believed in equality, real equality, even in this time. Don’t let anyone tell you that no one knew better. But not a lot of people stood up for it, and Lincoln wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t even a revolutionary manumission abolitionist, and others were. Frankly, most white abolitionists of the day were still really racist. They just think that the ‘Negro’ is too gentle to fight white people and that it’s a Christian duty to care for them and not exploit them. Not that different from an animal.”

“But _Lincoln_.” Steve said. “He freed the slaves. He went to war about it.”

“Slavery’s not done, not until December when the 13th Amendment is adopted. And maybe it won’t be without this, did you think of that? He went to war to preserve the union, and I think he would have made concessions similar to Jim Crow laws to keep preserving it. I’m not sure that after a war he’d be willing to risk another to win the political battles.

“As the timeline happened, Lincoln became a martyr. Republicans still claim him when they’re accused of racism because they know that his reputation has power. What happens if we save him, and he caves to southern demands to avoid further strife, and Jim Crow laws are put in place anyway, and for the rest of history everyone knows that Abraham Lincoln didn’t fight. If everyone knows that he signed away generations of black freedom in exchange for peace and quiet? Because that’s what I think happens, if we change history.” She shifted uncomfortably in the silence that followed. “I didn’t mean to make a speech,” she said, nervously. Steve looked a little like she’d shot his dog in front of him. “Sam?”

“Kinda seems like the moral of American history is always _white people were more racist than white people like to remember_.” He sighed. Lucy couldn’t tell him that he was wrong. “I want to make things better, too, but abolition and the civil rights movement was the work of thousands of lifetimes. I’m not smarter than Frederick Douglas or braver than Harriet Tubman or stronger than MLK. Racism isn’t something we can fix in a day, Steve. Not even a day in 1865. Our job is to protect the timeline. We have to look at the bigger picture, right? My answer’s the same that it was in Texas.”

“This job sucks,” Felicity said, sounding resigned. “And the past _smells_.” Sam snorted but no one could argue.

“So what’s the plan?” Steve asked finally. His eyes had never left Lucy. Was he angry with her, for not backing him?

“Booth used the theatre to get his mail. He’ll be there at ten, so – you and Felicity search it, in case Castle’s there, I’ll stake out the back, Sam sets up out front to tail Booth if he leaves?”

“I don’t like you being alone,” Steve said.

“People will pay less attention to Sam,” Lucy said. “You’re stupidly tall. And if I’m _with_ Sam then we become something to take notice of. And anyway, Castle’s shown that he won’t kill me. If he’s telling the truth about the journal he needs me to survive so I take it back, sometime in the future-past. I’ll be fine.” She tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Steve probably understood the survivor’s guilt, the way that the privilege weighed on you, but it was still privilege and she didn’t want to be petulant about it.

“We lose touch, we meet back there,” Sam said, pointing at a tavern. “Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“And Felicity, stick with someone else. Lucy’s right, you’re the most vulnerable.”

“And brand new to this. I won’t be reckless,” Felicity promised.

“Now why don’t you play the adorable couple and get us directions to the theatre?” Lucy suggested. Her knowledge of this political event didn’t extend to having memorised a street map of wherever they were. Steve offered his arm with exaggerated gallantry and Felicity, after glancing at Lucy, took it, and they went to speak to a local.

* * *

Frank fought the urge to kill Booth and get it over with. The man was ridiculous, insisting on his plan of a single shot Derringer and knife for the assassinations instead of just taking the two six shot Remington revolvers that Frank offered, because it was more “dramatic”. Frank was tired of all this, and he didn’t know if it was drawing to a close or just beginning, with HYDRA out in the open. He had to get this right. He _had_ to finish it and bring Maria and Lisa back. He had to make what Lucy had done to get him the journal worth it.

Amy had ridden along on this trip, though she was locked in the Mothership with David, as usual. He just didn’t trust the situation in the present to stay the same while they were gone. They'd had a contentious start. Amy had been a witness with HYDRA chasing her but hadn't wanted Frank's help. He might have had to cuff her to a radiator and endure Bill's jokes about kudnapping becoming a habit. But she trusted them now, joked and complained and acted like an almost normal teenager. When they’d left the Lifeboat, she’d been whining that she wouldn’t have internet access on her phone while waiting for them.

“We could just do it ourselves?” Bill suggested.

“We might have to,” Frank admitted. He was trying to make his changes with as little disruption to the timeline as possible – Lucy had been adamant about that in the journal, that they couldn’t possibly tell what the ripple effects would be and that every person who died or didn’t die or turned left instead of right could be a new Hitler, the person who would cure cancer or create a deadly bioweapon. The journal was back in the Mothership instead of on his person like usual, and his fingers itched for it. Bill gave him hell for it, but it had become a touchstone, a reminder that he hadn’t lost his mind and wasn’t alone in this fight, wasn’t leading his brothers astray. He wasn’t their Lieutenant anymore, but he always would be, and they _trusted_ him. They’d walked away from their lives to help him when he’d explained the crusade, and neither of them had been handed happy, prosperous lives. They’d built and rebuilt them painstakingly. He owed it to his wife and children to save them, but he also owed something to his brothers. They were family too.

* * *

Felicity hadn’t been kidding, the past smelled like BO and urine and perfume that made her eyes water but somehow still didn’t cover up the unpleasant scents. It was like everyone was a high school boy who had just discovered Axe body spray, and high school Felicity hadn’t been the happiest or most confident version of herself.

“You okay?” Steve asked.

Not only was she in the past, about to facilitate a murder and national tragedy, but she was doing it with _Captain America_.

“Yeah,” she said. “You?”

“This doesn’t feel right,” he admitted.

Steve hadn’t been on the _Hindenburg_ mission. He’d been barely conscious when he’d stumbled out of the Lifeboat after the Bonnie and Clyde thing. Felicity had spent hours refusing to leave her terminal for longer than a bathroom break, worried for Lucy, and he'd been right beside her when he should have been in the hospital. At the Alamo, there probably hadn’t been any option to stop the bloodshed. Even Steve Rogers couldn’t singlehandedly defeat an army of thousands. This was his first time really making a choice to let history happen.

“Last time, Lucy suggested we not write the letter. Maybe the rebellion would have failed and Texas would have stayed Mexican, stayed a place where slavery was illegal. Maybe that would have been better, I don’t know. But this is – never mind the what-if. We’re standing by and letting a man get murdered. A good man, a great one. And we’re just going to let it happen. No, we’re going to make it happen. And then I feel like a hypocrite because maybe that’s what Lucy thought, in Texas.”

“I think,” Felicity said slowly. “That it’s easy to think of protecting the status quo as being the more passive choice. Like if you change history you’re playing God, but if you’re trying to protect it you’re not really making a choice. I think Lucy’s right that we don’t know what happens if we change history. We could get back to a smoking crater in the ground. We could get back and my mom could be wiped out like Foggy was, but really gone. But I also think you’re right that it feels wrong to know something bad is going to happen and not try to stop it.”

“So what do we do?” Steve asked, coming to a halt in front of the theatre.

“The best we can?” Felicity suggested. “Look, we don’t know what Castle is trying to do. Maybe he wants to go into the theatre and machine gun everyone to death. So let’s – let’s just do the work. And we can decide later, about the – you know, big guy.”

Steve nodded, and they went into the theatre.

* * *

Sam and Lucy took a different route than Steve and Felicity. It doubled their chances to accidentally run into Castle, though they still weren’t great. If he’d been in civilian clothes Sam would have played her servant, but the uniform drew some eyes, so he trailed her by half a block. She looked over her shoulder as she went in the back, and he nodded at her before circling around to the front of the theatre to wait for Booth to leave. He was just wondering what the 1860s policy on ‘black men loitering near a business’ was when a group of soldiers spotted and greeted him.

“You alright there, Sergeant?” one asked.

“Yeah, man I’m cool,” Sam said, wincing internally as the other man frowned in confusion. “Uh … I’m fine.”

“What’s your name?”

“Sam,” he said, offering his hand. Handshakes were a thing, right?

“I’m Nicholas. Whereabouts you from?”

“New York.”

“So you was free when you signed up. You got kin or young folk still in bondage?”

“No,” Sam said, feeling punched in the gut at the idea. Nicholas asked it so easily, so casually, a friendly smile still on his face. “No, my family was all born free. Signing up - that was just the right thing to do.”

Nicholas nodded. “You’ve got those Sergeant’s stripes so you must read and write good, huh? Hey boys, get on over here.”

Sam looked at the group. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to be ready to follow Booth. And being the centre of this group’s attention didn’t lend itself to sneaking off, especially if they wanted him to read or write something for them. On the other hand, how could he say no?

Nicholas handed him a notebook and pencil stub. “You’re gonna write our notices for us,” he said. “The _Coloured Tennessean_ prints them free.”

Sam glanced past them at the theatre door. Booth couldn’t leave until he showed up, right? He nodded at Nicholas, who started to dictate. “Uh, Nicholas Biddle, 2nd Regiment, Coloured Infantry. Wishes to learn the whereabouts of his wife and four children. Children are Selia, Sarah, Elizabeth, and Adam Lee. My wife’s Anne, and the last I seen her was in a sale pen of a human trader named Robert Clark, Atlanta.”

Sam swallowed down the emotions he felt as the other man’s sunny disposition was sobered by the painful memory. Nicholas nudged his friend, who started dictating his notice. Sam kept writing.

By the time Booth showed up, he was on the last notice. He finished it and asked Nicholas what his plans were, keeping one eye on the door.

* * *

As he was waiting on Booth to exit, (trying to appear casual and disinterested was a lot harder without a phone to fiddle with), he spotted Castle. The only interaction they’d had was the fight, so Castle was less likely to recognise him than Lucy or Steve. He started across the street, trying to stay casual, but just then Booth exited, followed by Steve, and Sam heard the crack of a gunshot. Castle grabbed Booth and bolted, a sniper on a rooftop laying down cover fire. Sam took cover and fired on Castle. He had no line of sight to the sniper, the angle all wrong. He saw Felicity crouched down just outside the door to the theatre, and then Lucy came flying out of the alley. Steve had one hand pressed to his side, the other stubbornly aiming the gun, but Lucy was trying to stop him. She saw Sam looking and shook her head, waving him off. Afraid, he guessed, that they’d hit Booth, and derail history. Castle was gone anyway.

“We need to get out of here,” Lucy said when he had bolted across the street, hoping the sniper was fleeing with Castle. She looked grim and pale, and she was looking around at the onlookers. “Right now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	12. No matter what they tell you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was a chaste, closed mouth kiss, Lucy too shocked to kiss back.

_As he was waiting on Booth to exit, (trying to appear casual and disinterested was a lot harder without a phone to fiddle with), he spotted Castle. The only interaction they’d had was the fight, so Castle was less likely to recognise him than Lucy or Steve. He started across the street, trying to stay casual, but just then Booth exited, followed by Steve, and Sam heard the crack of a gunshot. Castle grabbed Booth and bolted, a sniper on a rooftop laying down cover fire. Sam took cover and fired on Castle. He had no line of sight to the sniper. He saw Felicity crouched down just outside the door to the theatre, and then Lucy came flying out of the alley. Steve had one hand pressed to his side, the other stubbornly aiming the gun, but Lucy was trying to stop him. She saw Sam looking and shook her head, waving him off. Afraid, he guessed, that they’d hit Booth, and derail history. Castle was gone anyway._

_“We need to get out of here,” Lucy said when he had crossed the street. She looked grim and pale, and she was looking around at the onlookers. “Right now.”_

* * *

Frank shoved Bill up against a wall. “We talked about this after Rhodes!” he said, furious.

“They were shooting at us, I’m not going to just not shoot back!”

“Whatever they think of us, we are not shitbags. We kill shitbags. We do not kill Steve Rogers.” Frank hadn’t bought into the ra-ra moral purity of the icon for a long time, but that wasn’t the point.

“He’s Captain America. He’ll be fine,” Bill shot back.

“And if you’d hit one of the others?”

Lucy had been in the alley initially, but the new blonde girl had been close to Rogers.

“I didn’t, did I?” Bill said.

“Goddamnit Bill, just keep it in your pants,” he ordered.

“You got it, Frankie boy,” Bill said flippantly.

Felicity tipped the bellhop, insisting everything was fine with admirable grace. Lucy was grateful. She didn’t have it in her and Sam had Steve’s arm around his shoulders, supporting him to the bed.

“Steve, damnit, you can’t do this to me,” she said, putting pressure on the wound. She looked him in the eye. “I can’t do this anymore,” she admitted. Her father was right, she wasn’t cut out for this. The blood and the losses were adding up, weighing heavier and heavier.

“I’m going to be fine,” he said soothingly. “Lucy. Lucy,” he repeated, putting a hand on the back of her neck. “I know what you said when we met, but I don’t want to make the same mistake twice,” he said earnestly, and then she felt a gush of warmth on her fingers as he leaned up to kiss her. It was a chaste, closed mouth kiss, Lucy too shocked to kiss back.

Sam cleared his throat, and Lucy pulled away to find him waiting with the medical supplies from her bag.They were packaged to look period-appropriate, but she wasn’t going to lose another team member if she could help it.

“Sorry!” he said.

“No, it’s fine. Steve is going to behave now and let us worry about this gunshot wound.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said soothingly. “What are we going to do about Castle and Booth?”

“I guess job one is to make sure that Grant gets out of town,” Lucy said. “Felicity and I can head to the train station while Sam patches you up. Tonight, we’ll split up and make sure that everything goes as planned.”

“Sounds simple when you say it,” Sam said with a rueful smile.

“I know it’s not,” Lucy replied. “But I don’t know what else to do except keep trying.”

“Hey,” Sam said. “You’re doing a good job of this.”

Lucy shook her head slightly. If she was doing such a good job, why did people keep dying around her?

“Let’s go,” Felicity said, wrapping a hand around her arm. Lucy washed her hands and checked herself for blood, but she was getting better at keeping it off her clothes. Practice made perfect.

“So you and Steve – this is a good thing, right?” Felicity asked as they walked toward the train station.

“Yeah,” Lucy said. “Yeah we’re – he’s wonderful. Obviously. Not just in Captain America ways, or because he’s gorgeous, but – he’s really sweet. I’m a lucky girl.”

Felicity grinned. “Yeah. I’m really happy for you guys. You two will be so good together.”

“Thanks. So what happened at the theatre? Everything was kind of gunshot-ty by the time I got there.”

“Well first I met Robert Todd Lincoln. He’s the President’s son, right? I did the thing I always do – open mouth, insert foot. I gave the most embarrassing fake name ever – do you have any tips for that?”

“Felicity is a virtue name - pretty classic, even if it’s uncommon. It’s probably safe pretty much anytime. But other than that? Go Biblical. Or from the Torah. It’s ancient, widespread, cross cultural. If you call yourself Mary, Sarah, Rachel, no one will bat an eye. If they ask for a surname, something like Baker, Carpenter or Smith is pretty safe in any English speaking area.”

“Okay, cool. Cause I never want to be Juliet Shakesman again. I learned about myself that I need a cover id prepped. Winging it isn’t really an option.”

“I’m the same way,” Lucy said. “And it’s not … that bad?”

“Yeah, you sound really convinced. Anyway, he was returning General Grant’s tickets. He works for him. Booth came in and got his mail and left, and then we left and Castle was there, and Steve told me to get down and started shooting. You joined us right after that.”

“If someone at the hotel reports us we’re screwed. Not to mention a shooting right outside the theatre might put Lincoln’s bodyguards on alert.”

Felicity bit her lip, and Lucy looked sideways at her. She knew what the other girl was thinking – would it really be so bad if the plot failed? And Lucy understood that, she did. This was hard. And the better Frank was at his job, the more she felt her nerve slipping.

Frank was at the train station. Lucy stalked up to him without a second thought, leaving Felicity behind.

“So you’re HYDRA?” she demanded, hissing the words. The shooting had her seriously doubting her previous theories.

“You know I’m not,” he whispered back, instantly just as furious.

“What I know is that you shot Captain freaking America, and if you tell me that you thought he was HYDRA I am calling bullshit!”

“I talked to Bill,” Frank admitted.

“Is Bill the guy who shot Rhodes. too?” Lucy asked, making a mental note to take a second look for a Bill, because none had been in the files of Frank’s known associates she’d gone through. “Because I have some words for him.”

“It’s handled,” Frank said firmly. “And we aren’t the ones who were working for HYDRA.”

“I’m not the one with a future-past journal doling out little dribs and drabs of information and using terrorist tactics and still expecting strangers to trust me!”

He didn’t have a comeback for that, and it left Lucy off-kilter, like losing your balance after pushing on something that abruptly gave way.

“Your dog is fine, by the way,” he said, after a moment of awkward, angry silence. “We call him Max.” From a pocket, he produced a photograph. The dog, now clean and identifiably gray, grinned up at the camera. His tail was wagging at whoever was taking the picture.

“What?” Felicity asked. Oh, right. Felicity. Lucy glanced around, but they didn’t seem to have drawn any other attention.

“There was a bait dog at the house Bonnie and Clyde were hiding out in,” Lucy admitted, showing her the picture.

“Sorry, you’re co-parenting a rescue dog with your archnemesis?”

“He’s not my archnemesis,” Lucy said, feeling heat rise in her cheeks. She tucked the picture safely away. "Dr Jack Thompson Jr from Brown _knows_ what he did,” Lucy said, folding her arms.

“Okay,” Felicity said slowly.

“And we’re not co-parenting a dog. We rescued him and my apartment didn’t allow animals. This is off-topic!” Lucy said. Her blush was definitely visible.

“Miss Shakesman?” someone said. Lucy nudged Felicity, whose eyes widened.

“Right,” she mouthed, then turned. “Mr. Lincoln!” she said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was planning to see some friends off,” Felicity said, waving at Lucy and Frank but walking away from them. Lincoln looked back, but his curiosity disappeared now that he had the beautiful blonde’s attention.

“So HYDRA is the mission?” Lucy asked, watching Frank carefully for clues.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s 1865,” she pointed out.

“HYDRA existed a long time before the Nazis did. Hell, it’s probably older than racism, at least the kind we know,” Frank said.

“So your plan is what?”

“Not to tell the plan to someone who’s trying to stop it,” Frank said, grinning wryly. She fought the urge to smile back. Sometimes their interactions gave her whiplash.

“You could have shot Booth already, so you’re not planning to save – him,” she said. Lincoln Jr should be out of earshot, but he was far too close to talk openly about this. “So you’re looking to up the body count, right? What, coach him? Give him a six-shot revolver?”

“It’s almost like you planned this."

“We can do better,” she said fiercely. “We could work together, but not like this. Unless future Lucy developed magical powers, no one can anticipate how this would change history.”

“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But this is better. This is necessary. And you _know_ you come to think so too. _You_ chose _me_ , Lucy.”

“Maybe I lost my way when I lost Foggy. Maybe your act of compassion made it impossible for me to be that Lucy. She was the only one in the world who remembered Foggy’s kindness, and his bravery, and his laugh, and someday she was going to forget what his smile looked like, and Foggy would be wiped from existence. She was alone in that grief, and maybe that made her feel like she had to work alone. But we can do better, together. Not Bill, he can go fuck himself as far as I’m concerned, but you and me and Steve and Felicity and Sam and Hoyle, we could work together to come up with a better plan. You have information that could help me.”

“I trust you and I trust Rogers not to be HYDRA. But even if they’re not, I don’t trust your team’s judgement. I don’t trust them to do what has to be done. I get that my hands aren’t clean, Lucy. But someone’s gotta do it.”

“Frank,” she said, but Felicity touched her arm and he stepped backwards. “Frank!” she repeated.

“Don’t get in the way, Lucy,” he said, stepping away.

She followed, getting close one more time. “I don’t know what future Lucy was like, but I take care of my people. If anything else happens to them, we’re done.”

“Keep them out of the way, then,” he replied, then stalked off.

“Castle broke the train,” Felicity said, behind her. “And I sort of have a date.”

“Wait, what?”

* * *

“Where were you?” Steve asked. “I was worried sick!”

“We had to go shopping,” Lucy said. “I’m sorry.” After the meeting at the train station, she had kind of forgotten the top level alarm she’d been feeling in regards to Castle.

“Shopping?” Sam repeated. She appreciated that neither of the men were the type to crack a joke about “typical women”.

“Felicity has made a conquest,” Lucy said.

“It’s a date, not a conquest. Also, he’s married by the time I exist. And dead. Obviously that’s more important. Ugh,” She sat on the bed. “Why is the first guy who’s interested in me in months a dead married guy?” Felicity covered her face with her hands. “And why does my brain always think of the worst way to say things?”

“He’s not the first guy to be interested in you,” Sam assured her. “You work in a male-dominated industry. They might be assholes, or too shy to say anything, but he’s not the only guy to be interested in you.”

“Aw, thanks Sam. There are definitely people interested in you, too.”

“Oh, I know that,” Sam said cheerfully. “Unlike you lunatics, _I_ have a healthy self-image.”

Lucy threw a clean rolled up bandage that had been left on the bed and hit him in the face.

“Oh!” Felicity said. “Show them the dog!”

Lucy obligingly passed around the picture.

“Where did you get this?” Sam asked, rubbing a thumb over the glossy paper.

“Frank brought it for her,” Felicity said.

“He knows you can find dog pictures on the internet, right?”

“They rescued him together. His name is Max,” Felicity said, a little gleeful. Traitor.

“He was a mess,” Lucy admitted. “We took him from Bonnie and Clyde’s. The poor thing was exhausted. He put his head on my shoulder and fell straight to sleep.”

“Awww,” Felicity said.

“You rescued a dog with Castle?” Steve asked.He looked pale, worse than she’d left him. The bleeding had only slowed thanks to the quik-clot and the serum didn’t seem to be doing much to heal him. Between the time-sickness and this, Lucy had some sharp words on the tip of her tongue about the serum, but she didn’t want to make Steve feel worse than he was. They decided that Felicity would attend the play and get General Grant out of the box before the assassination, Sam would protect Vice President Johnson at his hotel, and Lucy would go with Steve to Secretary Seward’s house.

“You’re not a soldier,” Steve argued. Lucy retrieved the gun she’d bought while they were out shopping, a six-shot revolver just like she’d guessed Castle had given Booth.

“I’m a decent shot,” she said, loading it. She’d have to be careful. The trigger safety hadn’t been invented yet.

“This isn’t your job,” Steve argued.

“My job is protecting history,” Lucy said. “This falls under that. Even if you were alright, I wouldn’t be sitting here doing nothing. That’s not who I am.”

“This isn’t supposed to happen to me anymore,” Steve said, frustrated. Lucy was sympathetic. It had to be a real mindfuck, having such a sickly early life and then thinking you’d been miracle cured, only to find out that time travel was a giant loopholes. Was the serum not working because chronologically, he hadn’t been injected yet? But if that was the case, wouldn’t he shrink? Or at least have asthma again?

The science wasn’t Lucy’s forte, so she put it aside for the moment. The job came first.

She helped Felicity with the unfamiliar clothes. Not that she had much more experience, but a second pair of hands helped. The costumes they’d worn were designed to be put on without assistance. Felicity’s night out dress was not.

“I don’t like this,” she admitted. “We could switch. I could go to the theatre. Just say you didn’t feel well and sent me. It would be weird, but we could roll the dice on him being too polite to tell me to get lost.”

“All I have to do is get Grant to leave the box,” Felicity reminded her. “I don’t have to stop the assassination. I don’t even have to be in the box when it happens. I can go for some air.”

“What if the timing’s different? What if Frank moves it up?” Lucy asked.

“Lucy, I know it’s my first trip but I’m not a junior member of the team. I knew the risks when I signed up.”

“You were the only pilot we had left. It would have been hard to say no.”

“I could have waited in the Lifeboat. I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t scared, but I want to do it. It’s like you said, about the good kind of fear.”

“Mine isn’t. I got the last pilot killed,” Lucy admitted, eyes filling with tears.

“You didn’t do that,” Felicity said calmly. “And Stark grew up rich. I’m scrappy. You don’t even know.”

Lucy chuckled despite herself.

“Steve listens to you,” Felicity said. “And he’s hurt. I can’t help him fight. This might be the safest place for me.”

“You’ll get out of the box,” Lucy said, gripping her elbows. “Yes? Promise?”

“I’ll get out of the box,” Felicity agreed.

Lucy nodded. “You look beautiful,” she added.

“Thanks. It feels terrible, really constrictive. I miss short skirts. My mother would be really proud.”

* * *

Lucy and Steve successfully crept up to Secretary Seward’s house with only the light of the moon. It was full, but Lucy had become accustomed in the past few years to the City that Never Sleeps, and the dark in the past was all-encompassing by comparison. They leaned against the side of the house, waiting and listening.

“Mrow,” they heard. Then again. “Mrrrrowwww.” The cat brushed against Lucy’s leg and she bent to pet it, hoping that the attention would quiet it down.

“We never talked about Bonnie and Clyde,” Steve whispered.

“What about them?” Lucy asked. More people she was supposed to not save?

“You worked with Castle. How was it?”

 _Comfortable_. “Fine,” she said.

“He didn’t get fresh with you?”

“He was very respectful,” Lucy said. She had been the one to sit in his lap and initiate the kiss, though she definitely wouldn't tell Steve about that. “Whatever else he is, he’s not that.”

“He could be playing you.”

“He could be,” Lucy admitted. “Or he could be a guy who blames a conspiracy within the US government for his wife and daughter’s murders and thinks this is how to stop that.”

“Killing someone else? From 1865?”

“You killed a lot of Nazis, Steve.”

“That’s different. _They were Nazis_. This Secretary guy is innocent!”

“What if he wasn’t? I’m not saying he isn’t,” she said hurriedly, picking the cat up so she could stand. It didn’t put her at a level with Steve, but it was better than crouching on the ground. “But what if he wasn’t? What if you were the only person in the world who knew about some horrible conspiracy, and you went to your friends and said, ‘this is real and it’s awful and I need your help’. What if HYDRA really was in charge and you and Sam and me were on one side and everyone else was telling us that we were wrong? And the press and the politicians and the police told the people that you’re the evil one?”

Steve was silent for a moment, his face shrouded in shadow. “Doesn’t matter if the police or the politicians or the whole damn world decide that something wrong is right. America was founded on one principle above all else: the _requirement_ that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world ‘No. You move.’”

“I think that’s what Frank’s doing,” Lucy said. “I don’t know if he’s right – I mean, I don’t think he’s right,” she corrected quickly. “But I think that’s what he believes, and what he’s doing.”

“What does that mean?” Steve asked. “For you?”

“As a historian and as my father's daughter I know that sometimes the right amount of violence in the right place is the best way to solve a problem, even if I don't always agree with the government about when and where and how much is right.”

“Like a bullet through Hitler’s head.”

“I don’t want to put a bullet through Frank’s head,” Lucy admitted.

Steve didn't say anything for a long moment. “I’m worried about Felicity being alone, but I’m glad we get to work together. Ever since this started I’ve felt like I’m losing you. You’re always going off somewhere I can’t follow. Rhodey at the Hindenburg, and Castle, and then at the Alamo we were fighting and - this job is changing you. And I don’t know how to keep you safe from that.”

“I’m right here, Steve. I’m the same person I’ve always been.” More stressed out and more fearful, sure, but fundamentally the same person. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe her tendency to guard herself had left him with a false impression. 

There was a sudden commotion, and Lucy almost dropped the cat as Steve readied for combat, but it wasn’t an assassin, she didn’t think. It was two men, and she edged close enough to see that neither Castle nor Hoyle were there.

“The President is shot!” she heard.

“It happened already,” Lucy said. The cat butted her head against Lucy’s shoulder.

“What does that mean?” Steve asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Maybe – maybe Seward wasn’t on Frank’s list. Or maybe whoever was assigned to him heard us talking and left.” She would bet that he would be at the theatre himself. She hoped so, at least. It made her feel a little better about Felicity being there without backup, that the trigger-happy Bill was likely to have been sent either here or to Sam’s location, where there was someone capable of handling him. If someone had backed off, it was probably Curtis Hoyle. She’d read his file back to front, talked to members of the medical team who had treated him when he'd lost his leg and coworkers at the non-profit where he’d done veteran’s counselling. He was smart and empathetic. Loyal, but like any Scout Sniper, he was trained to operate alone when necessary, to adjust to unanticipated mission conditions. From what Foggy and Sam had said about their dealing with him, it wouldn’t surprise her at all if he’d heard her talking Steve around to Frank’s mission and left them to it, no matter what his orders from Frank were.

“Stay or go?” Steve asked.

Lucy considered, but Frank was a thorough planner. If he was going to make an attempt, he’d have done so with the element of surprise. “Go,” she decided. “Bye, kitty.”

“We should take it,” Steve said.

“Take it?”

“It looks half-starved,” Steve said. “There are always cats and dogs on an Army base. We can find room for one little cat, right? And look how friendly she is.”

Lucy couldn’t argue with that. Her fur was matted, filthy and gone in spots. She wasn’t someone’s pet.

“Alright,” she agreed.

* * *

“A cat?” Felicity asked

“We’re taking it home, apparently,” Lucy said, still cradling it in her arms. It – she? – was happy there, purring and sticking her neck out toward Felicity for petting.

“So Lincoln’s dead?” Sam asked.

“Not yet. He’ll hang on until tomorrow. You’re alright?”

“Couple bruises, nothing I can’t handle. You?”

“No one came,” Lucy said. “Or they heard us and left.”

“My guy definitely tried to kill me,” Sam said. “Not Hoyle. White.”

“The mysterious Bill,” Lucy said. “There’s no one in the file who would fit. Anyone named Bill or William is deployed or otherwise accounted for. I’m going to have to go back and look for connections myself. Maybe a childhood friend? Just because they’re both military doesn’t mean that they met there.”

“How was the date?” Sam asked Felicity. “Other than his father getting shot?”

“Robert Todd Lincoln is courting someone named Mary. His parents were polite but they were super not happy about him bringing a side-piece to meet them. So you know, my luck with men is pretty much the same in the 19th century.” Sam bumped his shoulder against hers companionably.

“Let’s go home,” Lucy said.

“To the place with the Nazis? We made sure history doesn’t change. Slaves become sharecroppers, and they put poll taxes in place to stop people from voting, and the Klan will terrorise them into accepting it,” Sam said.

“Sam I’m sorry – if I knew how to stop it, I would." 

“We should get moving,” Steve said.

Lucy looked over at him. “Are you bleeding _again_?” she demanded, still holding the cat.

“I would rather not be, Lucy,” he said.

Lucy bit her tongue. She couldn’t blame either man for their feelings. They were right, even. She felt like she couldn’t do anything right and didn’t want to whine about it and bully them into comforting her. “Let’s get moving, then,” she agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This and obviously the last chapter are based on Timeless 1.02 "The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln". Your kudos and comments make my day!
> 
> Up next:  
> Keeping Steve alive felt like taking care of a toddler - he was stubborn, not as verbal as you thought he’d be, and he didn’t know what to be scared of.


	13. We snatch a stalemate from the jaws of defeat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I can stitch him up again,” Sam said. “But he’ll need a blood transfusion if he keeps losing it at this rate, and I can’t explain why he is. Best guess is there was some kind of toxin on the bullet and he needs a real doctor.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bits and pieces inspired by Timeless 2x09 “The General” and 1x16 “The Red Scare”.

Sam’s feelings about Jim Crow were shunted aside pretty quickly as he dealt with the practical realities. Steve’s belief either that the serum made him invincible or that his life wasn’t as important as that of other people had been getting progressively worse. Sam hadn’t been working with them for that long before Stark’s death but he was leaning to that as a trigger for the latter explanation. Steve refused to accept Sam’s help back to the Lifeboat, moving with the kind of grim stubbornness that Sam had always found so compelling in the stories. Now he just felt a kinship with Bucky. Keeping Steve alive felt like taking care of a toddler - he was stubborn, not as verbal as you thought he’d be, and he didn’t know what to be scared of. Lucy looked over at him every few seconds, and not in any kind of way related to their kiss. Sam would bet good money that the barely-veiled panic had driven that clean out of Lucy’s mind. She was continuing to do her job and Steve was making sure that he took the bullets so far. Sam was too busy with the job and Steve to worry about her, but someone was going to have to make the time sooner or later because she was having her own problems with Stark’s death and the general level of violence in her work-life, and they weren’t getting better.

He knew that she’d asked for a SHIELD therapist, someone she could be honest with. When he’d asked how it was going she’d made a face and said something about not clicking but sticking with it. Normally he’d tell someone to switch therapists, because building trust and rapport was crucial and some people just didn’t work together, even if the therapist was great at their job. Under the code-word classification, that wasn’t exactly an option. She was more or less stuck with Dr. Dumont.

The problem with clotting continued, and by the time they were at the Lifeboat even Steve couldn’t ignore the effects of blood loss from sheer force of will. He leaned heavily against Sam, and Sam buckled him into his seat as Felicity punched the coordinates into the Lifeboat’s navigation system.

“Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” he confirmed.

They whooshed into a two car garage, the ceiling of which cleared the Lifeboat by less than a foot. A window revealed that it was night, so Foggy and Peter and whoever else was in the house would probably be asleep. Sam got Steve to the couch and then went to wash up, Lucy going upstairs in the darkened house to find the more extensive first aid kit. She’d quickly gone through the warehouse before they left, deciding what would be transported and what could be abandoned, going through the costumes with an eye to dressing them all in something that might not be fashionable but wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb in most circumstances. The limited personal effects in the apartment had been left to Foggy.

She hovered over him as he worked and Felicity quietly explored the kitchen cupboards. “I’m sorry,” she said, the third time he looked up at her. “I know your med training is limited. I don’t expect you to work miracles.”

“I can stitch him up again,” Sam said. “But he’ll need a blood transfusion if he keeps losing it at this rate, and I can’t explain why he is. Best guess is there was some kind of toxin on the bullet and he needs a real doctor.”

“I can maybe make that happen,” Lucy admitted, starting to pace.

“We call Hill?” he asked.

“My ‘fiance’,” Lucy said. “He’s a surgeon. Apparently. All I actually know is he’s been really understanding and is down for phone sex.” She made a face.

Sam wasn't going to touch that with a 10 foot pole. “Is it going to make things harder for you to call him?”

“I don’t care. Obviously we’re not supposed to go outside SHIELD, but at this point-”

“If we’re voting, I vote hot fiancé,” Felicity said.

“Me too,” Sam admitted.

“Okay,” Lucy said, looking relieved. She pulled out her cell and made the call. “I need you,” she said, fighting tears. She turned toward the tv, away from the three of them. “The address?” she repeated. Felicity pulled the paper with the coordinates out of her bra and handed them over. Lucy rattled them off. “Just plug it into Google maps,” she said. “Thank you, Bill.”

* * *

Lucy went outside to wait for Bill, and Felicity joined her a few minutes later, handing her a peanut butter sandwich and a bottle of water. Lucy didn't have much interest in food but took a bite anyway.

“Hey, Lucy? I didn’t get Grant out of the box. I tried, but – I couldn’t.”

“He’s dead? Lis, it wasn’t your fault. I just – I need to know this stuff.”

“He’s fine. Or, he was when I left. I – I didn’t get out of the box either. I tried to stop it. But Castle was there. He grabbed me and he could have thrown me right off the balcony, but he got between Booth and me. Booth had two guns, but after the first shot, they both jammed. I don’t think that was Castle’s plan, though. I think he thought that Booth was going to shoot up the box, and he shielded me until Booth was down on the stage and he had to get out of there.”

“Are you okay? I didn’t even ask,” Lucy said, appalled. “Physically or emotionally.”

“Physically for sure. Emotionally – so far? I just thought you should know. What you said to him? He listened. I don’t know what that means, but he listened.”

“Maybe,” Lucy said. “His wife and daughter died, maybe – maybe he just has a problem with killing women.”

“Maybe,” Felicity agreed.

When they returned, they had their hands on their heads and a gun pointed at their backs.

“Son of a bitch,” Sam muttered, pushing up from his crouch next to the couch and slowly circling it until he had a clear path to the gunman.

“You have no idea,” Bill – if that was his name – said.

"This is the guy I fought, Lucy," Sam said.

“What the fuck?” Lucy demanded. It had never occurred to her that Frank’s Bill, the one who had shot Rhodes and Steve, would be the same as her supposed fiancé. It was a common enough name, and he hadn’t been in Frank’s file, and SHIELD had said they were engaged – but of course HYDRA was in SHIELD, and Sam hadn't even been on the team when they had learned about Bill-the-fiancé. He'd never seen the file or the pictures in it.

“Shut up,” Bill ordered, grabbing the back of Felicity’s neck with one hand and pointing the gun at them over her shoulder. “I’m not supposed to kill you,” he said to Lucy. “But no one said anything about him, or Captain America, or blondie here, and I will shoot them all and make you watch them bleed out if you try anything clever, do you understand me?”

“I understand,” Lucy confirmed. Sam moved from foot to foot beside her and she stepped in front of him.

“Lucy, move,” Sam said quietly.

The gun swung to Felicity’s head again.

“Take me,” Lucy said. “I’m a more valuable hostage, you just said so.”

“I need blondie, and somehow I don’t trust you to behave yourself. All those lessons with Colleen Wing? Adorable. Useless, but I am afraid that it put ideas in your pretty little head,” Bill said. The cadence of his words, the tone – he enjoyed this. He was a cat playing with a mouse.

“It’s okay, Lucy,” Felicity said. She sounded terrified, but she squared her shoulders and looked Lucy in the eye. “I’ll be fine.”

“See?” Bill said. “Now everyone’s going to walk nice and slow in front of me. Rogers can stay, since he’s not getting up off that couch anytime soon.” He chuckled. Lucy and Sam preceded him to the garage and the Lifeboat, hands on their heads, and watched as Bill forced Felicity into the Lifeboat, closed the door, and it whooshed out of existence.

They bolted back to the living room and their phones, Lucy getting hers first and calling Hill as Sam rerouted to lock down the house.

Hill and a trusted few SHIELD agents arrived soon, coming through the back door.

“Where is Steve Rogers?” asked the young brunette in an English accent.

“Where was the Lifeboat?” The man next to her asked simultaneously, speaking in a Scottish accent

“Lifeboat, Steve,” Lucy managed, pointing in the various directions.

“How long-?” Hill began, walking in next.

“Twenty one minutes,” Sam said, following her to the living room. One of the tactical agents – were all of SHIELD’s agents so young? – walked in and looked at Steve for a minute.

“It’s a trip, right?” Sam asked. It startled the younger man, who gave him a hard look for a moment, then shook his head.

“Sorry, man,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Antoine Triplett. Everyone calls me Tripp.” He looked back at Steve for a second. “I, uh. I heard a lot of stories about him, growing up. Anyway. Jem, what do you need?”

“You could help me with these samples,” Jemma said. She was drawing blood, as though Steve needed to lose any more of that.

“Thanks for coming,” Sam added.

He only caught a quick glimpse of the Asian woman as she walked in the door and went straight upstairs. Lucy joined him in the living room with Hill and a guy who looked like an unassuming accountant or a pleasant middle manager. “Was that-?” Sam whispered to Lucy.

“Melinda May,” she said, nodding.

“How do you know her?” asked the man. A younger brunette stood at his side.

“And you’re Coulson, right?” she asked. “You, uh – we met, once. It was more memorable for me than for you, I imagine.”

“The team’s been read in,” Hill said.

“We met in my timeline. Now how are we going to get Felicity back?”

“Fitz will come up with a way to track the Lifeboat, and Simmons is working on an antiserum for the poison,” said Coulson. “They’re my scientists. This is Skye, she’s our computer specialist _and_ a field agent in training.” He smiled proudly at her. 

“If we could track it through time-space why haven’t we just tracked the Mothership back to the future?” Sam asked. In the future, with modern transport limits and no need to brief the strike team about time travel, they could have easily ended this months ago.

“We don’t know how to track it,” Hill said.

“Yet. FitzSimmons are the best,” Skye said.

Lucy was back to pacing, only about four steps either way.

“House is clear,” May said. Sam jumped. He hadn’t heard her enter the room at all. Simmons took her samples and disappeared to run some tests on them.

“A transfusion would buy some time, right?” Lucy said. “I’m O negative. Can we figure it out here?”

“You won’t be able to pace,” Sam said, mostly joking.

“I’ll send Tripp in,” May said cryptically, looking to Coulson, not Hill, for a nod of confirmation before heading for the door to the garage.

Tripp, it turned out, also had some medic training, and between the two of them, Lucy’s first aid kit and equipment from the cloaked plane that May had apparently landed in the sprawling backyard, they jerry-rigged a passable blood transfusion. Lucy watched Steve worriedly, joggling a leg, and Sam caught Coulson watching, too. He wasn’t the only one.

“Watching him sleep again, AC?” Skye asked. Coulson flushed slightly as Skye expounded on the fanboy awkwardness of their first meeting. He had apparently been a part of the effort to assimilate him to the future.

Skye was just getting to the trading cards when FitzSimmons, as the science duo were apparently called, returned, followed by half a dozen tiny flying drones like ducklings trailing after their mother.

They spoke over one another with words that mostly sounded, to Sam’s ears, made up. He wasn’t a dummy, but he was glad that he wasn’t in Tripp’s position. Stark had gotten that way a bit, but Lucy was careful to make her historical explanations easy to understand, had a knack for making people feel real and normal even before he’d met them.

Coulson held up a hand and they looked at each other, silently electing the woman to speak.

“The toxin is breaking down already,” she said. “The serum is adapting. If the same poison was used again, it would be ineffective.” Lucy breathed a sigh of relief. “We haven’t got an immediately apparent way to track the Lifeboat,” she added. “But we have some theories. Give us a couple of days and Tony Stark’s notes-”

“Felicity doesn’t have days!” Lucy said sharply, pushing to her feet and nearly pulling the line out of her arm. Sam put a hand on her shoulder and pushed gently to get her to sit back down. She popped right back up, though more mindfully of the line, grabbing his arm. “Sam, they took Felicity!”

“I know, Luce.”

“No, I mean – I wouldn’t have a clue how to get away. But this is Felicity. And she has JARVIS. They’ll find a way to get us her location. All we have to do is get online and figure out how they’ll tell us!”

Three hours of Fitz (the Scot) and Simmons (the Englishwoman) leaning over Skye’s shoulders while she tried to hack into HYDRA’s communications, they had a location, sent directly to Lucy’s email. The time delay had been on Felicity’s end, not a matter of discovery, so they knew that she hadn’t immediately been killed.

“You riding along?” May asked Sam. He glanced at Steve. The chance to work with the Cavalry was something.

“You go,” Tripp said. “She should see a familiar face. I’ll back up the rest of your team.”

“Thanks, man,” Sam said. They’d woken Peter and Foggy after Bill took Felicity, so Lucy had some other, conscious company, but he still asked her, “You cool?”

“Bring back Felicity,” she said, face drawn tight and pale. “Then I’ll be cool.”

* * *

Felicity held her hands up off the keyboard when she heard the click of a safety being turned off.

“What?” she asked.

“You let her on a computer?” asked an unfamiliar female voice. It was crisp and precise. Educated, Felicity thought. Old money, or a good imitation.

“She’s decrypting the SHIELD files,” said Bill. He stepped up behind Felicity and wound her ponytail around his hand. The hair on the back of her neck stood on end, her skin crawling. “They’re backed up, the computer isn’t connected to the internet, I’m watching her.”

“You wouldn’t know if she sent an email right in front of you. She doesn’t touch a computer again until she’s been re-educated. Give her this.”

“Give me what?” Felicity asked. She tried to turn her head to look but the hand in her hair tightened painfully.

“It’ll help you sleep. You’ve got lots to learn. You’re going to be an excellent addition,” said the boss. Bill forced the pill down Felicity’s throat and then escorted her to a small room. She felt a moment of panic upon seeing the bed, his hand still wound in her hair, but he just gave her a shove and locked the door behind her, snapping something at the guy stationed there and stomping away.

First order of business was getting the drug out of her system. There was a bathroom attached to the room, just a tiny toilet, sink and shower deal, but enough that she could stick her fingers down her throat and flush the mess away, the sink running to cover the sound. Next she needed to get the door open and deal with the guard. The room had almost nothing in it, just a small set of drawers, nothing that could be easily splintered into a weapon, nothing inside. Then the bed. Still nothing that she could stab or swing with, just cheap scratchy sheets and a hotel type blanket. She folded her arms, looking around. No windows, so no possibility of tying the sheets into a rope or something. Not that climbing on a blanket-rope seemed like a good idea, but staying wasn't either.

“They won’t let me call Matt,” Foggy said.

“Well no, this is a safehouse. You know what the government can do with an unsecured phone line. And you already told him that you’d be going away. What else is there to say?”

He stared at her in disbelief.

“I mean, no, I know,” she corrected. “I’m sorry. Of course you miss him. I totally get that. But if it’s a choice between being sad and being safe, I can’t argue with SHIELD on this one.”

“Lucy?”

It was Steve’s voice.

“Just a second,” she said.

“Forget it. I’m going to go check on Peter,” Foggy said bitterly. Lucy sighed and rushed into the living room. “Are you okay?” She heard the back door slam. Tripp was out there, too, she knew. She knew where everyone in the house was. Foggy was fine. Peter was treating this like the most exciting thing that had ever happened to him. Given that he had travelled through time, she thought it said more about his generally optimistic outlook on life than anything else.

“I feel better.” He was sitting up, still looking a little pale. “Sam?”

“Went with the strike team to get Felicity.” She sat on the edge of the couch. “She’s slightly kidnapped, but she managed to send us her location."

“Come here,” he urged, holding up his right arm, his good side. She leaned against his shoulder, pulling her feet up on the couch. They just sat quietly for a long moment. “If the serum isn’t going to stop stuff like this, what good is it?” he asked. “I – in some ways it was easier, being a 90 pound asthmatic shit disturber. Being Captain America-” he sighed. “I miss when the Nazis wore uniforms.”

Lucy hummed hrer agreement.

“What about you?”

“I miss when being a good sister was as simple as never forgetting his stuffed elephant,” she said wistfully. “I remember when they let me hold him the day he was born, and the nurse said I had to watch out for him, because that’s what big sisters did, and I thought _this_ is what I’m here for. This is who I am.” There was a beat of silence. “It’s a lot more selfish than yours.”

“Selfish isn’t the word that I would use,” Steve assured her.

Felicity rolled off the bed and fell to the floor with a thump, taking most of the sheets with her. She heard a muffled curse and then the door swung open.

“You couldn’t have passed out on the bed?” the guard grumbled. She thought he might leave her, but apparently HYDRA held her hacking abilities in pretty high regard because he stalked toward her and picked her up. She slipped the noose she’d fashioned out of the bedsheet around his neck, quickly tightening it and pulling with all her might. She got behind him, knees braced on his shoulders. He tried to shout, but the pressure on his neck limited the noise. Then he tried to fight, but she ignored the flailing and held on as they got weaker. It felt like it took forever, felt like it was loud even though she could hardly hear anything over the rush of blood in her ears, but she held on until he went limp. She scrambled up and checked the hallway as cautiously as she could. It was blessedly clear. The facility hadn’t seemed large, more of a converted warehouse than anything else, and she only saw one person on her way to the Lifeboat, a young man in a guard’s uniform who gave her the eye but pretty obviously didn’t recognise her.

When she saw the Lifeboat she broke into a run. She heard a man shout at her to stop, but there was no one between her and the machine. She scrambled into the open door just as bullets started flying, and it snapped shut behind her before she could worry about closing it. They whooshed out of there a second later.

“JARVIS?” she asked when they had landed.

“I took the liberty of returning to our prior location,” JARVIS said. “It appears to be free of hostiles. Would you like me to open the door?”

“JARVIS, you’re the best,” Felicity said, patting the floor with a sigh of relief.

The last bit of anxiety eased when she opened the hatch and Lucy and Foggy barrelled into the room. 

"See? Scrappy." She threw in some jazz hands because Lucy looked like she needed a laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated.
> 
> Coming up:  
> "Aw, coffee, no."


	14. Tomorrow there'll be more of us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The door opened and a man walked through carrying a stack of pizza boxes. “What’s going on, guys?” He seemed completely unphased by the half-dozen guns pointed in his direction. May hadn’t drawn one, though she had tensed briefly.  
> “Sorry, is that a quiver?” Lucy asked.

The team prepared to relocate again, for good, to a secret SHIELD base that Fury apparently had stashed away, giving a clue to senior agents. This was Coulson’s, so Hill still had one that, for operational security, she didn’t divulge. Coulson would be in charge of the time travel project while Hill rebuilt SHIELD as it’s new Director.

“I don’t like it,” Steve said. “How do we know he’s not HYDRA?” _Like Sitwell_ went unsaid, but barely. Steve wasn’t great with authority to begin with. Being assigned to a HYDRA commanding officer and having a team member kidnapped hadn’t helped anyone’s trust levels.

“Fury used to say Coulson was his good eye,” Hill said quietly, the team gathered in the kitchen. Fury had been killed in HYDRA’s initial takeover. “He trusted him more than anyone. More than me. Coulson would have been Fury’s successor if he hadn’t declined promotions that would have taken him out of the field. He’s never been interested in climbing the ladder, but there’s no one better at talent-spotting, and he handpicked this team. Antoine Triplett is the grandson of Gabriel Jones, though he won’t thank me for telling you.” Gabriel Jones had been one of the Howling Commandos, though the American news hadn’t always showed him or Jim Morita, the team’s non-white members.

“Gabe-?” Steve said, looking over his shoulder as though he could see through the walls to the young man who was related to one of his Howling Commandos.

“The scientists have 5 PhDs between them. They’re widely regarded as some of the most brilliant minds in SHIELD. If they were HYDRA, they’d have been whisked away somewhere safe by now. Even this project isn’t worth risking them as a double agent. Skye, the hacker, was personally recruited by Coulson.”

“And May?” Steve asked.

“She’s legendary, too,” Sam said quietly. “Her and this guy Eliot Spencer were known as the Cavalry. As in, when you were all out of options, you prayed that higher ups would send in the Cavalry. With you in this condition, I’m not sure I’d bet on both of us being able to take her.” Steve was rapidly improving, but still visibly not in top form.

“Phil was their handler, until Spencer left and May took a promotion out of the field. She went back to fieldwork for Phil. They’ve been friends for years. I trust her more than anyone on earth.” Though the words implied some kind of warmth or personal connection, Hill’s face and tone were carefully professional.

“They saved me, once,” Lucy said. “When I was a kid.”

“They’ll be good backup,” Hill said. “You need support, both scientific and tactical. Not in the field, I’m not saying that any of you are getting bumped, but I’d feel better if there were more people watching your backs at home.”

Lucy looked to Steve first, then around at her other teammates. One by one, they all nodded their agreement. “Okay,” she agreed.

“Luce, I need to talk to you,” said Foggy quietly.

“I’ll tell Peter,” said Steve, and Sam and Felicity headed off to make friends with their new counterparts.

“How are you doing?” Lucy asked.

“I don’t know how to say this,” her brother said.

She watched him search for the words with a sinking heart. “You’re not coming.”

“No, I'm not,” he agreed.

“Foggy, you have to.”

“You’re on this project. You’re doing something amazing, and I’m so proud, but Luce, I’m not involved. I can’t just sit around on some SHIELD base twiddling my thumbs or doing make-work. Maybe this the timeline we end up in and maybe it isn’t, but I need to be rebuilding my life. I need that, Luce. Can you understand that?”

She sighed. “Of course. But Foggy it’s dangerous.”

“A little, I know. But Sitwell and SHIELD only ever knew me as Foggy Preston, right? And Stark took care of all the id and university stuff, so they don’t know what I was going to school for or where.”

Lucy had to admit, it was the truth as far as she knew.

“Hill’s gonna call in a favour and get me some kind of protection who don’t know who I am.”

The door opened and a man walked through carrying a stack of pizza boxes. “What’s going on, guys?” He seemed completely unphased by the half-dozen guns pointed in his direction. May hadn’t drawn one, though she had tensed briefly.

“You don’t have people outside?” Lucy demanded, turning to Hill.

“I do. He’s better,” she said. “Barton.”

“So HYDRA’s still a thing, huh? Woulda liked to have known that before I had to crawl through a Yemeni sewer to get away from people who were supposed to have my back.”

“You’re not the only one,” May said dryly.

“Who crawled through a sewer recently? I spent three hours in the shower. Oh hey, Coulson! I’m clean now! Very clean and, uh, normal. Cause I am normally … you know … clean.”

“Barton,” Coulson said in reply.

“Sorry, is that a quiver?” Lucy asked.

“This is Hawkeye,” Hill said. “Our best sniper.” Their best sniper used a bow and arrow?

“You said this safehouse wasn’t on any databases.”

“It isn’t. I’ve been Barton’s handler since we brought him into SHIELD. He was the only one who knew about this place. He’s the third person I trust absolutely,” Hill said seriously. “Even if he is a walking trainwreck.”

Barton had managed to retrieve the coffee pot from the kitchen and was drinking directly out of it. And sweet talking it? Coulson took his quiver and the case he’d been carrying and Barton leaned against the wall beside him. He wasn’t a man who’d had an easy life – he had a crooked nose from at least one healed break and his sleeveless shirt left scars on his arms visible. He was quite the contrast to Coulson, an almost aggressively nondescript businessman type with blonde-brown hair receding from the front of his head, a kind but forgettable face, and a suit he wore like a second skin, but they seemed to relax as they stood shoulder to shoulder eating pizza and rehashing what sounded like an old New York vs Chicago argument.

May walked into the kitchen after doing a check of the perimeter. “Took you long enough,” she told Barton, swiping the coffee pot.

“Aw, coffee, no,” he said.

“You up to speed?” she asked.

“Coulson’s on a secret project with you. I assume my new job is watching Hill’s back while we put SHIELD back together. Man of honour duties are forever. I take ‘til death do us part’ seriously.”

Hill shot Barton a warning look, their deep familiarity enabling them to have an entire silent conversation. He shrugged unapologetically, and Coulson elbowed him gently. Lucy knew she was missing something important to these dynamics, but their faces gave no clue as to what.

“You’re not exactly a person who excels in high level meetings and a supervisory capacity, Barton,” May said. “And I’m not exactly someone who will blend in with pre-modern America.”

“You want to trade?” Barton asked. “You protect my best friend, I protect yours?”

May shrugged. “It’s just an idea.”

Barton looked at Hill, who nodded. “Fine by me.”

Hill’s phone chirped loudly and she checked it, sighing. “November 18, 1946, New York City.”

November 1946. Kennedy was elected to Congress. The Nuremberg Trials were ongoing. But in New York, specifically-

“The first session of the United Nations General Assembly was underway. I think they voted on a resolution about persecution in November.”

Felicity checked. “November 19, 1946.”

“You think HYDRA wants to scuttle the resolution?”

Lucy shook her head. “Their founding Articles contained similar principles. But that’s a lot of diplomats in one place. Maybe they want to mount a large-scale attack, create chaos, sow blame, but that’s not really Castle’s style. He’s been very targeted so far. It’s probably a specific assassination, but I can’t tell you of who off the top of my head. It could take us hours to even begin to figure out the delegations from every country, let alone who might be important there later. Hell, I don’t know what kind of resources exist. It could take us weeks. So far he’s been focussed on American history, but part of that is probably ease of operation. This could be an opportunity to interfere basically anywhere in the world without having to worry about sticking out visually or a language or cultural barrier. I mean, if he dropped into Vietnam or Iraq or Egypt everyone’s going to wonder about the tall white American. He wouldn't be unique, but he'd be noticable. But in New York? That’s home turf.”

“Okay, but we can operate easier in New York, too. The SSR had a New York office, right?” Steve asked Coulson.

“It’s not the kind of place you can just walk into, but yes.”

“So Steve’s out. Even if being unconscious doesn’t count, we don't need an Elvis-style conspiracy .” Lucy said. “JARVIS can help Sam and I navigate.”

“No way,” Felicity said. “You’re not going without me. I’m not letting HYDRA do that.” Lucy looked at the younger woman. Her jaw was set, her eyes fierce.

“Okay,” Lucy agreed. “Let’s find the boxes of costumes.”

Barton raised his hand like a kid in class and Lucy nodded at him automatically, her 'politely attentive' face on . “Sorry, what’s happening?” he asked.

“Tony Stark built a time machine,” Coulson said. “A Marine Scout Sniper has been trying to change history for months. This team has been trying to stop them.”

“Stark created a time machine and lets SHIELD play with it?” Barton asked skeptically.

No one said anything. “He’s sort of dead at the moment. But we’re going to fix that,” Lucy said determinedly. They’d just dramatically expanded their circle of personnel aware of time travel. If they could just get a moment to breathe, to make a plan that wouldn’t screw up the timeline that got them here and train a pilot (because she wasn’t sure what doubling up would do to JARVIS), they could get him back, finally.

“When did he die?” Tripp asked.

“1836.” Lucy knew that wasn’t the answer he was looking for.

Lucy didn’t know where Frank had put down the Mothership, but it took them entirely too long to make their way into the city and 1940s women’s shoes were not particularly made for walking. She and Felicity did most of the hike to public transportation barefoot. They split up after conning their way into the UN building with forged credentials, Clint checking nearby rooftops.

She swore under her breath when she saw Frank dressed again in a janitor’s uniform, but she knew that she couldn’t make a scene. He made his way toward her, and she hoped that Sam and Felicity were safe.

“You okay?” Frank asked.

“Are you kidding me?” Lucy hissed, mindful of the diplomats around them enough to temper her volume but too furious to be any more eloquent.

“What is your problem?” Frank took a step backwards.

“Save it,” Lucy hissed. “I don’t care what you say. If I see you, or Hoyle, or Russo, someplace that making a scene won’t change history, I will shoot you myself. I told you, I take care of my people. We’re done.”

“I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about!” Frank said, and damn was he good. Or she was a sucker. He caught her arm but dropped it when she pulled it sharply away. “Lucy. I’m serious.”

She scoffed, shaking her head. “Bill kidnapped Felicity, stole the Lifeboat, and took them to a HYDRA base. I was alerted to his existence by Sitwell, the instant I stepped back into the present after the _Hindenburg_ . And then my-” she stopped abruptly. _Her mother_ . Her mother had mentioned Bill, had referenced his supposed profession and his looks and his place in her life specifically. She shook her head to clear it. “I’m supposed to believe that you kept him out of my sight on multiple missions, until he used a poison bullet to temporarily neutralise Steve’s serum, panic me and get me to call my ‘doctor’ fiancé _by coincidence_? That he was, what, freelancing?”

“This is bullshit, and it’s lower than I thought you’d sink,” he said angrily. “Bill is my brother. Not just because we served together. He’s – he was Lisa’s Uncle Billy. We were his only family. You have no right to-”

“He kidnapped and threatened my friend. And if I see him, I will shoot him.”

“This is what HYDRA wants, Lucy, us at each other’s throats.”

“Actually, I think what HYDRA wants is the Lifeboat and the Mothership. Bill failed to steal the Lifeboat, so if I was you, I’d watch your back.”

“Bill doesn’t know how to pilot the Mothership.”

“Yeah, he solved that problem with the Lifeboat by kidnapping our pilot at gunpoint. He looked me dead in the eye and said he wasn’t allowed to kill me but he’d shoot her. Was it you who gave him that order, or was it your boss?” _Was it my mother?_ She didn’t have the bandwidth for this on-mission. She shoved all her mom feelings ruthlessly into a box, slammed it shut, and shoved it to the back of her mind.

“I don’t have a boss, and I don’t believe you,” Frank said.

“Foggy said there were four men when you kidnapped him. You, Hoyle, Bill and your pilot, right? I’d arm your him and tell him to watch his back,” Lucy said, feeling the anger fizz through her veins. She didn’t know if he was an idiot or a liar, a Nazi or a patsy. She didn’t think it mattered anymore. “Who’s your target?”

“Whatever’s gonna happen has happened. You should get your people clear and quit listening to whichever SHIELD goon came up with the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy.” Frank ducked away through a crowd, and Lucy went to round up Sam and Felicity.

When they got outside the building, she hand-signed just in case Clint was watching, not expecting the pebble that hit the ground just in front of her. She looked at Felicity. “Coincidence, right?”

Then a penny hit the same spot, actually bouncing off the pebble. She picked it up. The date said 2016. She shook her head at the rooftop across the street where she thought Clint was, handing the penny to Felicity, who passed it to Sam.

“Well, shit,” Sam said, whistling through his teeth.

“Let’s get lunch while we regroup,” Lucy suggested.

“Can I get lunch with you guys?” Sam asked skeptically.

“In 1952 there was a Committee on Civil Rights that sent out testers and black patrons were served everywhere in Manhattan, though not as politely as whites. If it was just the three of us I would definitely worry, but Clint will give us a sheen of respectability. I’m not sure how it’ll go,” Lucy said honestly. “They didn’t try interracial groups. We can grab something to go and find a park bench?”

“I’m game to try if you are,” Sam said. “Just checking.”

“I do try to be mindful of your safety,” Lucy said.

“Hey, I know that,” Sam replied.

“Oh man, say the respectability thing again,” Clint said, joining them and hunching over, hands on his knees, to huff and puff. “First time anyone’s ever said that about me, I guarantee.”

“Can you read lips?” Lucy asked.

“That shit’s hard, but yeah,” he said. “I’m Deaf, so,” he shrugged.

“You’re Deaf?”

“I have hearing aids.” He turned and lifted his hat to let her see, and upon close inspection she could see something. “They’re pretty invisible, so I figured they wouldn’t be a problem.”

“Can I practice ASL with you?” Lucy asked eagerly.

Clint shrugged. “I guess, yeah.”

“Can we do this sitting down? These heels are killing me,” Felicity said.

“I know a place,” Lucy said. “This way.” She stopped at a payphone on the way and called in a bomb threat to the UN, just in case, but the _Hindenburg_ aside, bombs weren’t really Castle’s style. Tony had been right that he didn’t have a particular background in them, and they were messy, disorganised and imprecise. When Castle killed someone, it was because he had wanted them, specifically, dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually forgot while writing this that my headcanons about May were just that. We found out that May was divorced shortly before Maria Hill was set to guest star, and then her Mom says something about "I always liked Maria" which I thought was weird since they all last name each other. And Andrew was fine, I guess, but you can pry the headcanon (that May and Hill were married and the marriage fell apart after the incident that broke the Cavalry team up and they both still love each other but they don't know how to fix it) out of my cold. dead. hands. That Clint and Maria are longtime partners and friends was new to this fic but I liked it. I definitely got the idea that Clint would do better with a not-a-white-dude authority figure from a Clint/Coulson fic, and if I figure out which one (or anyone wants to remind me), I'll happily edit that info in. Clint is more of a Fraction-y version than MCU, because it's funny. Kudos and comments are always appreciated :)
> 
> Coming up:  
> “I should tell them,” Lucy said. The dread was like a lead weight in her stomach.  
> “Should we?” Felicity asked. “I mean, Coulson’s team probably isn’t HYDRA, but they don’t know you. You’d probably be pulled from the field.”


	15. And Peggy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep forgetting to change the chapter posted date to the correct one, so if you're following along week by week make sure you read last week's chapter!

_Previously:_   
_“What is your problem?” Frank took a step backwards._   
_“Bill kidnapped Felicity, stole the Lifeboat, and took them to a HYDRA base. I was alerted to his existence by Sitwell, the instant I stepped back into the present after the Hindenburg. And then my-” she stopped abruptly. Her mother. Her mother had mentioned Bill, had referenced his supposed profession and his looks and his place in her life specifically. She shook her head to clear it. “I’m supposed to believe that you kept him out of my sight on multiple missions, until he used a poison bullet to temporarily neutralise Steve’s serum, panic me and get me to call my ‘doctor’ fiancé by coincidence? That he was, what, freelancing? Who’s your target?”_   
_“Whatever’s gonna happen has happened. You should get your people clear and quit listening to whichever SHIELD goon came up with the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy.”_

* * *

The cheerful waitress introduced herself as Angie and barely blinked at Sam sitting with them, though Lucy made sure to slide into the side of the booth with Felicity just to be safe.

“So what exactly did he say?” Clint asked.

Lucy stopped halfway through her recitation of the conversation when she saw a familiar face walk by and sit at the counter.

Clint was elbowing Sam. “Dude. Dude!”

“I know!” Sam hissed. “Everyone be cool.”

Felicity leaned forward to look past Lucy. “That’s-”

“Peggy Carter,” Lucy said reverently. She felt her cheeks burning and ripped her gaze away to find Sam looking amused.

“Starstruck?” he asked.

“Shut up,” she said automatically. Okay, maybe she knew about this place from her favourite biography of Carter, and maybe she’d come here kinda sorta hoping to see her, but now she almost regretted it. What if she outed them? What if Carter asked too many questions? What if she got suspicious?

What if Lucy blurted out something stupid and soothing about Steve being alright? What if she didn’t, and got back to the present and Steve—

“Do you know what you want?” Angie asked.

Lucy ordered the first sandwich on the menu and a milkshake and handed over her menu.

“What do we do?” Clint asked, after Angie had walked away.

That’s when the redhead walked out of the ladies room and slipped a garotte over Peggy’s head. Clint was up and over the seat behind him in a flash, joining in the fight.

“Down!” Sam ordered them, and moved to grab the waitress, who had thrown a plate at the assailant’s back and picked up a frying pan.

The assassin held her own against Peggy and Clint, her movements fluid and graceful despite the violence. Or maybe Lucy was just getting seriously warped. After a brutal but brief fight as Sam got the civilians under their tables, she seemed to decide that discretion was the better part of valour, hit Clint with a roundhouse kick that sent him flying into Peggy, and bolted for the kitchen. Sam ran after her. Clint threw the knife he had taken from the assailant and then followed, leaving an elderly couple, three groups of businessmen, two secretaries, Angie, Peggy, Lucy and Felicity.

“Who are you?” Peggy demanded, one hand massaging the other. She’d caught the garotte and Angie had acted fast enough to keep the assassin from putting the proper pressure on, resulting in redness that would bruise but no broken skin. “Who are they?”

“I have no idea who the woman was,” Lucy said. Technically it wasn’t a lie, although she had a pretty good idea who had _sent_ the woman. Bill must have made contact with existing HYDRA agents. “The men are with us.”

“I need to call the office,” said. “Angie, are you alright?”

“How much do we know about the SSR?” Felicity whispered.

“Not enough,” Lucy replied. She had no idea how many HYDRA plants were in Peggy’s office. She had no idea how many were in the command structure or how many assassins HYDRA was willing to throw at the problem of Peggy Carter or how long it would take them to be successful, but if they were highly motivated – and she could see why they would be – and even a little bit skilled – which the red-haired woman certainly had been – then they had a major problem.

“Agent Carter, I need to speak to you before you make that call,” Lucy said, striding forward determinedly.

“Lucy?” Felicity cautioned.

“What did you call me?”

“I can’t say I didn’t hope to meet you,” Lucy said, letting the fangirl shine through. She’d never learned how to grift properly, but she knew enough to lean into helpful truths. “But certainly not like this. Ma’am, please. I didn’t realise it until now, but you’ve been targeted by some highly motivated people, and we need to get out of here.”

Peggy looked from Lucy to Felicity. The blonde shrugged. “Come with me if you want to live,” she said dryly.

“Call the police, Angie. Tell them everything, except about them,” Peggy gestured at Lucy and Felicity. “I’m sorry, I – I never thought I’d bring violence here.”

“It’s not your fault, English,” Angie said. “Stay safe, you hear?”

“You too,” Peggy said, and gave the other woman a quick hug.

Lucy boosted a car for them and gestured for Felicity to take the driver’s seat. “Drive like a moron,” she instructed.

“I am going to require an explanation,” Peggy said in her crisp accent. She had taken the backseat, and Lucy hadn’t offered her the front. She wouldn’t want strangers at her back just now.

“Oh, boy,” Felicity grumbled. She signalled she was turning left and then turned right, ignoring the blaring horns. Lucy kept one eye on the rear-view.

“Who are you?” Peggy asked.

“I’m an admirer,” Lucy deflected.

Peggy’s lips tightened. “While it’s always a comfort to know what Captain Rogers meant to people-”

“I beg your pardon,” Lucy interrupted. “Take four rights in a row,” she told Felicity, then met Peggy’s eyes in the mirror. “I’m a fan of _you_. Your work during the war was incredible,” Lucy said. “And I’ve no doubt that there are great things in your future.”

“Are there?” Felicity asked quietly, glancing sidelong.

Lucy made a firm decision. The four turns completed with no tail in sight, she looked at Felicity. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

She turned in her seat to look at Peggy. “In the year 2016 Howard Stark’s son Tony will invent a time machine. HYDRA slithered out from under the rocks they’d been hiding under and stole one of them. They’ve been trying to change the timeline, and I think they decided that killing you was integral to that. We’ve lost this battle to save the timeline,” Lucy said simply. “HYDRA won’t stop until you’re dead and we don’t have the manpower to protect you and enable you to live the life you were supposed to live. If you come with us, we might eventually be able to bring you back, but I can’t promise that. You may never see your friends and family again.”

Peggy eyed her with suspicion. Lucy dug Clint’s penny out of her pocket and handed it over.

“Why me?” Peggy asked, rubbing her fingers over it.

“You lived a remarkable life,” Lucy said sincerely. “I own every biography ever written about you, except that hack job by Thompson. I used the library's copy to write a rather scathing review. He's still not over it. I had a poster of you on my wall as a kid. I dressed up as you for Halloween for four straight years. The first year, Foggy – my brother – he went as Captain America’s shield. Not Captain America, just the shield,” she laughed at the bittersweet memory of the two of them beaming with their uncles, memories and pictures that had been lost in the timeline shift. “I don't know how much to say,” she said honestly. “I don’t know – Tony would never explain the timeline stuff to me. I don’t know if he didn’t know and didn’t want to admit it, if he did know and didn’t trust me, or if he really thought those are the words that humans use to effectively communicate information. I don’t know how safe it is, for you to know what you’re supposed to do, if you choose to stay.”

“And Howard’s son?” Peggy asked, picking up her use of the past tense.

She gripped the seat tighter. “We’re going to get him back.”. She really should get on that, now that they had more personnel. Someone could be trained as a pilot - Clint, or Tripp, or perhaps Fitz or Skye. But even with weeks between missions, it just never seemed to stop. There was always more history to worry about.

“If I stay, they’ll get me sooner or later,” Peggy said, sounding tired.

Lucy was firmly convinced of that.

“I’ve always chosen the job, I don’t know why I’d stop now,” Peggy said. “It sounds like we didn’t finish the job.”

“Should we ditch the car?” Felicity asked.

“No, we’ll just dump it,” Lucy said. “Take it as far as we can.” She didn’t know what to say to Peggy, and the other woman seemed lost in thought. They were quiet all the way to the Lifeboat.

“Oh my,” Peggy said when they pulled away the camouflage they’d made of branches and leaves. “You really were telling the truth.”

“Are we waiting for the boys?” Felicity asked.

“We’ll have to make two trips anyway. They know the drill if we get split up. I say we go now and come back,” Lucy said. Maybe it was awful, but she didn’t want to give Peggy too much time to change her mind.

Felicity nodded. “Are you ready?” she asked Peggy. Peggy had her hand on the Lifeboat and was wide-eyed in wonder.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she supposed. Felicity climbed in first, Peggy quicker to learn how to do it in heels and skirt than Lucy had been, and she buckled herself in just fine.

“It’s not a pleasant trip,” Lucy warned.

Peggy nodded. “Here we go,” warned Felicity. They jumped, and when Lucy was able to focus again, she saw Peggy a little paler, gripping the seat hard, but looking alright. Lucy opened the door and led the way down the stairs.

“There’s another thing, about being here,” Lucy said, already hearing the footsteps. She didn’t get a chance to explain, because the first person through the door was obviously, from the look on Peggy’s face, Steve. Lucy looked over her shoulder. His t-shirt was soaked with sweat, and his hands were wrapped for hitting the heavy bag.

“It’s real,” Lucy said, not sure who she was talking to. Then Peggy was quite suddenly in Steve’s arms. Lucy walked past them to a gaping FitzSimmons.

“Peggy Carter didn’t die?” Simmons said.

“Who do you work for?” she asked.

“SHIELD,” Fitz answered absently. “Or, uh, we did. Do we still? Legally, I don’t know.”

“Because HYDRA came out of hiding?” Lucy asked.

“Yeeeesss?” he replied slowly, eyeing her with trepidation. “Was that not supposed to happen?”

“That’s how it happened, for me. Still working on it. Who founded SHIELD?”

“Howard Stark and Julian Pierce,” Simmons said. “Oh my – it was supposed to be-?”

“Yes. Guys, we need to find Steve.”

Fitz pointed to the embracing couple. By then, everyone in the bunker had found their way to the hanger and there was a general hubbub of surprise and welcome.

“Romantic,” Coulson said, appearing next to her and nodding at Steve and Peggy. Peggy’s head was hidden against Steve’s chest, and his face was buried in her hair. Coulson looked uncomfortable. "In, uh. In the timeline I remember, you and Captain Rogers - well, he kissed you goodbye before you got in the Lifeboat."

"Did he?" Lucy replied, as mildly as she could. "Well, it appears to have worked itself out."

He looked at her, and she saw a flash of the true Coulson under the mild-mannered exterior.

"I'm fine," she said. "I'm worried about Peggy. She was supposed to found SHIELD, get married, raise children. I have a lot of work to do, but HYDRA being hidden and coming out of the shadows happened in my timeline. I thought bringing her was better than letting her get killed. Sam and Clint chased the assassin. We’re going back now, and I'll figure out the effects of changing the timeline later but Coulson if they went back to kill Peggy, do you think they’ll just leave Steve in the ice?”

Coulson blanched, and turned to his science team, who looked similarly startled, and immediately started chattering about ice migration patterns and climate data and computer models.“Are you coming?” Felicity asked.

Lucy turned to face her. “Yeah, of course,” she said, a little annoyed that Felicity would even consider the possibility of going back alone.

“Tripp would probably go with me,” Felicity said.

“If you’d rather have someone who’s better backup that’s fine. Or I can go with Tripp and JARVIS can pilot. You’ve had a day,” Lucy said.

“No, I want to go get them,” Felicity said stubbornly. “With you, if you’ll come.”

They flashed back to 1946 and sat on the hood of the car, heels abandoned in the Lifeboat but a gun in Lucy’s lap. They’d hear a car coming, out here in the middle of nowhere. And if someone had tracked them they’d have made a move before Peggy was out of reach.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Felicity asked. “The Steve thing?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know that much about the movement of ice, but I’m sure that Fitz and Simmons-”

“The Steve and Peggy thing,” Felicity clarified.

“Oh. It’ll be weird, when he remembers. But I’m okay. I’m – I think I’m kind of relieved, actually. Not that’s he’s not – I mean, he’s basically the perfect guy and I do – he’s the best. But-” Lucy shook her head. “Maybe I’m still messed up about Grant.” It had to be Grant, she told herself. She definitely hadn’t at any point had a treasonous crush on anyone else.

“Grant Ward, the test pilot?” Felicity asked. “I helped Tony look it up,” she admitted. “I mean, we met him. I didn’t know him that well. He came from an actual piloting background, not a coding one, and the two sides didn't really gel all that well.

“Another thing I don’t want to talk about,” Lucy said. “Hey, how about my other fiancé? You want to talk about that?”

“Yeah,” Felicity said quietly. “If that’s okay?”

“Of course,” Lucy said. She felt like a big sister again, and for a heartbeat the ache of missing Foggy was unbearable again. She breathed through it, familiar with the feeling, and Felicity was too lost in her thoughts to notice.

Felicity didn’t say anything for a long, long moment.

“I was kidnapped once,” Lucy said finally. “Not in this timeline, I guess. Or – the old timeline. Now I’m on timeline four? This was in timeline one. The Colonel pissed some local warlord off and they threatened my nanny’s family. She was crying when they took me away, just kept apologising over and over. You did a lot better than me.”

“How old were you?”

“Old enough not to piss myself,” Lucy said. “But I did.”

“Oh, no,” Felicity said sympathetically.

“The Cavalry came and got me. I guess both my parents were on mission, unreachable. Melinda May helped me clean up, and Eliot Spencer braided my hair. I remember Foggy sat in my lap, even though he was too big to do that, really. Coulson debriefed me, and May convinced Foggy to go get ice cream while we talked about the scary parts. I still think that Foggy’s long hair is because of Spencer. He started throwing a fit about haircuts right around then. I had mine bobbed and Dad got mad when he came home. He told Foggy that he looked ridiculous with his hair longer than his sister’s, forced him to cut it off. I haven’t cut my hair shorter than Foggy’s since.” Her mother had been horrified, too, but it hurt too much to think about her. It was one thing to think she was a person who probably shouldn’t have had children, a person who pushed Lucy to what Carol wanted instead of what Lucy did. It was another to think she’d pushed Lucy toward a Nazi. “And I still don’t like tight spaces. Every time I get into the Lifeboat I feel like I’m suffocating.”

“That Bill guy, he held me by the ponytail a lot. He’d play with it, you know?”

Lucy looked sideways at the blonde, whose hair was in a bun instead of her usual style.

“I still don’t feel, like, clean,” Felicity said, shivering.

“Did he touch you in any other way that made you uncomfortable?” Lucy asked. She had heard Felicity’s recitation of events previously, but there had been a lot of other people in the room.

“No, nothing like that,” Felicity assured her. “Just – he was enjoying making me scared. It was fun for him, and that made me mad that I was giving him that, you know?”

Lucy nodded. “If you ever want me to braid your hair, I could,” she offered. “I used to do Foggy’s when he was a kid. We could figure out something that doesn’t leave much to grab hold of. If that would help.” They could cut it all off like Lucy had, too, but that would take years to grow back to its current length, which could function as a constant reminder. It would also be out of place in a lot of the past.

“Yeah,” Felicity said. “Maybe later?”

“Anytime,” Lucy said. “Open offer.”

“At least it’s a nice day,” Felicity said.

The boys turned up bruised and scraped, with one “mild” stab wound, but largely unharmed, and they returned to the present to find most everyone had dispersed. Peggy and Steve were nowhere to be found. Fitz, Simmons, Skye and Coulson had retreated back to the lab, and Peter was with them. Tripp had been waiting for them with a med kit. Sam and Clint bickered about who was more badly hurt. Tripp sided with Sam that stab wounds, however mild, trumped scrapes and surface bruises. Clint retorted that Sam had been hit in the head and probably had a concussion. Sam shot Clint an outraged look and Lucy made a mental note not to trust Sam’s report of injuries any more than Steve’s. SHe'd already pegged Clint as the type. Felicity ran the check through their personnel files that had become routine since the _Hindenburg_.

“Lucy,” she said.

“What?” Lucy’s heart leaped at the alarm in her tone.

“Your mom, she isn’t a SHIELD agent. Not anymore.”

“What is she?” Lucy asked, approaching the computer where Felicity sat.

The blonde looked up at her through the glasses she reverted to when off-mission. It was just the two of them by the computer. “She’s a history professor.”

Lucy sat heavily. “I realised something, on-mission,” she admitted. “Carol knew I was ‘engaged’ to Bill. She knew that I told him that I was in Malibu.”

“Shut up!” Felicity covered her hands with her mouth, the words echoing in the hanger. The boys looked over.

“What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

“Nothing,” Felicity said quickly.

Lucy realised her hands were crushing her skirt only when Felicity tried to lace their fingers together.

“This isn’t your fault,” she said fiercely. Sam still had one eye on them, but Tripp and Clint were bickering again, and he was soon distracted.

“I should tell them,” Lucy said. The dread was like a lead weight in her stomach.

“Should we?” Felicity asked. “I mean, Coulson’s team probably isn’t HYDRA, but they don’t know you. You’d probably be pulled from the field.”

Lucy’s breath caught at the thought of her friends out there in history while she was safe in the bunker. What if another one died? She hadn’t been much help to Tony but she wasn’t going to make that mistake again. And she felt perpetually underprepared on the history front, but she knew they didn’t have anyone prepared to step in.

“They might put you in one of the cells in the basement. At least temporarily.” Felicity's eyes were wide behind her glasses.

Lucy’s hand clenched on Felicity’s. Being locked into a windowless room – she didn’t know if she could survive that. Not again.

“But if I don’t tell them-” she began. If they found out on their own….

“There’s no evidence,” Felicity said quickly. “You had what, one conversation? It was innocuous at the time. There’s a lot going on. Maybe you just didn’t think of it yet. And it was in another timeline! It’s not like we can do anything. Well she’s completely underground, as far as I could see. She’s got no access to you. I’ll put a flag on her, just because she’s your mom and she could be in danger. There’s one on mine. And then when they know you, we can figure it out.”

Lucy mentally turned over the plan, prodding it for holes, but it was sound. She nodded slowly. “Okay. Thank you.”

“Hey, this is selfish, too,” Felicity said. “I don’t want to go back in time without you.”

“Thank you for trusting me,” Lucy said, holding the other girl’s eyes. She meant it. It wasn’t inconsequential.

Lucy looked up Daniel Sousa first. Successful career in SHIELD, married to the same woman for forty years, several children and even more grandchildren. Lucy let go of a bit of the guilt. She had never believed that there was just one potential love for anyone, but it set her mind at ease a bit that he’d wound up (as far as she could tell) happy. She moved on the history of SHIELD, American espionage, and foreign intervention. An American aide at the UN had been found poisoned during security’s sweep for the bomb. Lucy assumed he was important in some way, but she wasn’t sure exactly how. Though no doubt putting their own people in key positions, it looked like HYDRA had mimicked Peggy’s founding and development of the agency as much as possible. The Secretary of Defense was now Julian Pierce’s son Alexander, who had not come out as HYDRA but sure hadn’t said a word against them. She wondered if Frank felt responsible, or if he was just angry with them for interfering in his plans. She wondered if he blamed Bill or one of her team for the activation of the HYDRA assassin. She wondered if she was an idiot for still believing that his anger was real.

She could only find a couple of reports on the redhead. They codenamed her Black Widow. She often worked in conjunction with another assassin, the Winter Soldier, who wore a mask and had a metal arm. Present tech that Bill had smuggled back somehow, if she had to guess. Even Howard Stark wouldn’t have been able to produce something that was as much a weapon as a replacement limb. The reports indicated it functioned as well as a natural hand. To do that AND be hauled around by a human wasn’t possible, not with 40s tech, nevermind that reports indicated that it moved just as easily as a normal hand. The general view was that it wasn’t a metal arm at all, but some kind of glove worn over a skin and bone arm designed to intimidate the Americans with technological superiority. She couldn’t blame the agents. Even now it was a marvel. She sent Coulson an email – there couldn’t be that many people today who could do it. Maybe tracing it could be helpful to Hill.

It was impossible to remember every clandestine foreign intervention that America had engaged in her timeline, but she didn’t think that things had changed much there. HYDRA had been securely embedded in SHIELD for a long time in Lucy’s timeline.

Eventually a calendar notification popped up. She got to a good stopping place and went to find Sam.

“How are you doing?” he asked as soon as he saw her.

“I don’t know how we’ll explain them to the public,” Lucy admitted. “But that’s a problem for After.”

“Anything I can do?” Sam asked. “I can read Wikipedia as well as the next guy.”

“I think I’m about done. Broad strokes – not much changed. Not geopolitically, or anything. Presidents were all the same. It’s little things. Wonder Woman was based on Peggy, you know? I mean, not the backstory, obviously, but-”

“Yeah, she did kind of look like her, huh?” Sam said. “And the whole Steve-plane-suicide run thing is a little on the nose.”

“She had a husband and kids and kept working. Not a lot of women did that. Thinking about all the little girls who didn’t have Peggy freaking Carter to look up to – that hurts more than-” she waved her hand to indicate romance.

“She was still amazing during the war,” Sam pointed out.

“Sure martyrdom is powerful but Peggy got to have it all, decades before it was cool. She had a husband who supported her, loved her even when she overshadowed him. She was the head of an intelligence agency while raising three kids. That – that’s a thing not every girl gets to see, you know?”

Sam nodded thoughtfully. “And personally?”

She’d been thinking about going back to the last morning she’d seen her fiancé and kidnapping him, then feeling guilty because she was probably supposed to be jealous of Peggy at this point, not Steve. And then she felt guilty about not ever really thinking about saving Grant, even after she decided to save Tony. And then she wondered if Frank really was HYDRA, or if he was telling the truth and tricked by Bill, and felt guilty that he’d come up in that line of thought. But this conversation wasn’t supposed to be about her.

“I’m okay, Sam. How are you?”

Riley might not have been a romantic kind of love, but that didn’t make the pain of losing him less real. Hell, Lucy had been more broken by the twelve hours without Foggy than by losing Grant, as weird and guilty as the comparison made her feel.

“I think about it,” he admitted. “About telling Coulson that when we’re done, we go back and save him. Making it a condition of my participation. But,” he shook his head. “Riley would tell me to do my duty.”

Grant wouldn’t. He’d come across like that at first, stiff and formal, even awkward. Like a thousand stand up but boring military guys she had known over the years. Lovely bone structure, but not her type. She’d almost stopped seeing him – there just hadn’t been a spark. But then he’d gotten comfortable with her, and she’d learned about his slightly mean sense of humour and his incredible loyalty to his mentor/father figure John, his abusive family and his lack of care for anyone who wasn’t in his circle. It made sense, of course – no one had looked out for him. It made sense that having that kind of childhood, with a sadistic brother and mother and a father who let it happen, would teach him that empathy was useless. He wasn’t like his brother Christian, didn’t hurt people for fun, he just – didn’t go out of his way to help them, either. Unless she asked, and then he did it with a smile. He was a good person, just not used to kindness.

“I know it’s a tough day,” Lucy said.

“What do you mean?” Sam replied. He looked at her and she knew it was written on her face. “You looked me up,” he said.

“I’m sorry if it was an invasion of your privacy. I just wanted to know, to make sure that – that for one day, at least, someone’s looking out for you.” When the rest of them were wrapped up in themselves, Sam could always tell when someone was having a bad day. He’d pop up with an offer of tea, or suggest a card game, or he’d hang out in the lounge reading in companionable silence long after he normally would have gone to bed.

He leaned back in his seat. “No, I appreciate it,” he assured her. “I’m – it’s still hard,” he admitted. Lucy nodded. “I still feel like I could have done something. Like I should have done something. Like it’s my fault.”

Lucy shifted to face him fully. “Do you want me to talk you out of it or do you just want me to be here?” she asked.

“What makes you think that you can talk me out of blaming myself when my psychologist couldn’t?” Sam asked.

“Because I’m not a psychologist, but my mom was a manipulative bitch,” Lucy said. “And I picked up more than I’d like to admit.”

Sam laughed. Lucy smiled. “Shoot,” he said.

“Was Tony’s death my fault?” she asked, sobering. “I mean, I had a gun on his killer. I had time to pull the trigger. If it’s your fault that Riley died, then it’s _definitely_ my fault that Tony died. So you make the call, and that’s what we’ll go with, Sam.” She met his gaze, her tone even and her eyes resolved.

“If I say no, you’ll believe it?” he asked.

Her lips formed themselves into a masking smile that didn’t cover the pain underneath. “I’ll try,” she promised.

He nodded slowly, taking it seriously. “Me too.”

“Deal,” Lucy agreed.

A/N (end): I always that recruiting Peggy would be a plot point, but it wasn’t till I started to write it that I realised the chapter title (duh). Somewhat inspired by _Timeless_ 2x04 “The Salem Witch Hunt”.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up:  
> “JARVIS, do you get bored?"  
> “My processing capabilities exceed my current tasks,” JARVIS said carefully.
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated :)


	16. Dropped in the middle of a forgotten spot

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m starting to think God is a romantic,” Sam said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on Timeless 1x12 “The Murder of Jesse James”, with some additional facts about Bass Reeves because they left out some really cool stuff. Timeless had a subplot with Bass Reeves’ (made up, as far as I could tell) mixed race but Native-passing best friend where they make fun of “Indian guide” tropes that is very funny, but it didn’t make it in here.  
> Jane Archer (nee Sissmore) is another extremely cool real person. Kim Philby, the leader of the “Cambridge 5” spy ring and a coworker in British intelligence, wrote a memoir after his exposure and said that she was the person he was most scared of. She worked her way up the MI5 ranks from clerk to be the first and top-ranking female officer. She became their premiere Soviet expert and best interrogator and was an all-around fun to read about badass. I could go on, but the point is that she was a pretty big deal in MI5 at the time Peggy was coming up and there weren’t a lot of women officers.

Despite being up half the night reading Carol’s work, Lucy woke early the next morning with an idea. She eyed the Lifeboat with trepidation but she didn’t have time to stall – she wanted privacy to do this quietly, and the bunker was full of early risers. For the first time she climbed in voluntarily, without a mission to distract her. She left the door open, which helped the claustrophobic sensation only a little.

“JARVIS?” she asked hesitantly.

“ _Yes, Dr. Preston? Can I help you with something?_ ”

She couldn’t tell if that was eagerness or politeness.

“Do you get bored?” she asked, feeling a little silly.

There was a pause. Had Tony programmed that conversational quirk in? “ _My processing capabilities exceed my current tasks,_ ” JARVIS said carefully.

“I have two ideas. First, yesterday when I was doing research I was thinking - that was HYDRA’s biggest win yet, the most changes, and it’s hard to know what the knock-on effects of things will be. It’s not just the things that I know to check. But you go on our trips, so you should remember the old timeline, like we do. I don’t know if you’re connected to the internet or if you need to be – it’s called ‘air-gapped’, right?”

“ _am currently, but I am capable of a sophisticated and powerful cyber-defense if attempts were made to hack me, including shutting down my matrix without effect to the Lifeboat’s manual navigational capabilities_ ,” JARVIS said.

“So if you wanted to you could run an analysis of the changes that happen. And maybe even – maybe you help me sort through my mother’s work. I’m going to read it all, but I’m not an expert in everything she’s written about. And my historiography is from an alternate timeline. I don’t know if it’s all still valid. There could be different schools of thought here, different accepted mainstream opinions. You can read a lot faster than I can and assimilate more information, find connections I would have missed. Is that – would you be interested in that? At least until we get Tony back. He might have projects that are more in your interest.”

“ _I_ _would be very happy to help you, Dr. Preston. I – thank you._ ”

“I’ll talk to Felicity today about getting you internet access.” She bolted for the door, hesitating at it. “I’m sorry, I don’t like small spaces.”

“ _I quite understand_ ,” he said. “ _Good day, Doctor._ ”

“You could call me Lucy, if you wanted. Good day, JARVIS,” she replied.

She walked into the kitchen desperate for coffee and something to eat and found Peggy there. Still in her head about Carol’s work and hopeful of what JARVIS’s help would mean, she smiled at the other woman and went about making coffee.

Peggy wrapped her hands around the mug of tea, choosing her words carefully.

“It occurred to me that in my excitement, I’ve been very cruel to you. I wanted to apologise.”

“Cruel?” Lucy repeated.

“You rescued me and I’ve quite stolen your boyfriend,” Peggy said.

“We kissed. He wasn’t my boyfriend,” Lucy waved a hand dismissively.

Peggy’s eyes were kind, but her tone was firm, and it occurred to Lucy that perhaps she hadn’t caught Jane Archer’s eye because she was another brilliant woman in British intelligence, but because she’d been a particularly gifted interrogator. “You wouldn’t have kissed him if you weren’t serious. And neither would he. With one memorable exception, Steve wasn’t the type of fellow to run around kissing every dame he laid eyes on.”

“We could have been happy,” Lucy admitted, setting the coffeemaker to work and turning to face Peggy. “I still think that. But we wouldn’t have ever been in love. I’m glad for my friend and for someone I really respect and hope will be a new friend. You don’t owe me any kind of apology.”

Steve walked in. “Hey, Peg,” he said, glowing with love and kissing her before he registered that Lucy was in the room. “Oh. Hi, Lucy,” he added, shifting from foot to foot like a child in trouble.

“Morning,” Sam said, following him into the kitchen.

“How long do you think it’ll take him to stop blushing?” Peggy asked. “Is there a betting pool?”

“I think Clint’s probably the one to ask about that kind of thing.”

Steve was flushed, looking sidelong at Peggy.

“I wonder if I’m allowed to put money down. Though – I suppose I don’t have any money.”

“Why stop fighting HYDRA now?” Lucy asked. “SHIELD will pay you. Talk to Coulson. He’s apparently a huge Cap fanboy so I’m pretty sure he’ll do anything you ask.”

“That sounds rather devious,” Peggy said, sipping her tea demurely.

“It’s a good thing for him that you don’t have any experience in subterfuge.” Lucy smiled.

“Guys, you’re freaking Steve out,” Sam said. He was leaning against the counter. “I’m not objecting,” he added. “Just didn’t want you to miss the show.”

“I’m not freaked out,” Steve protested, but the flush had spread to the back of his neck and the tips of his ears.

“’Freaked out,’” Peggy repeated slowly. “Interesting. And did you say, ‘fanboy’?”

“I need to get Peter squared away, but then we can sit down and start catching you up on what you missed,” Lucy offered. “I originally was hired by SHIELD to do it for Steve, so I have a curriculum. And he wasn’t on the mission, so he’ll remember this timeline instead of the one I remember, and he can tell us where I go wrong.”

“That sounds lovely,” Peggy said. “If there’s anything I can teach you-”

“How to fight?” Lucy said immediately. “I had a teacher before we moved. She’s probably pretty worried about me, actually.” She winced. _Sorry, Colleen_.

“It’s a deal,” Peggy said.

Lucy turned back to the coffeemaker. It was nearly empty. She turned her head and saw Sam casually sipping a mug of coffee.

“Mine!” she complained, making grabby hands.

“Finders keepers,” Sam said.

The coffeemaker continued to burble away – she’d set it to make a full pot – but it was the principle of the matter. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I won’t forget this,” she vowed.

* * *

Peter was always a bit all over the place, smart enough that Lucy struggled to keep up with him when she was dredging up high school math memories, and brimming with enthusiasm. Peter had been working on his own while she was gone with a science textbook and some worksheets, and her plan had been to grade them and then figure out anything he had issues with while he finished his report on the early UN, but he was more interested in HYDRA and Peggy Carter, calling Lucy a “primary source” as the cat purred in his lap.

Lucy was proud of that but needed all her attention for grading. She had done fine in her science classes in high school but the truth was she was learning it along with Peter, and given the amount she’d been running around in the past, debriefing and filing after action reports, often behind him. She wondered if Felicity would be better at it, and if she’d let Lucy pick her brain now that they were all living together, but she was with Coulson’s team working on the Captain America problem and that took precedence.

“Peter, why don’t you go ask Peggy?” she suggested.

“I’m allowed?”

“I mean, be respectful in your questions and if she tells you to leave her alone then do that, but otherwise,” she shrugged.

“Cool!” Peter said, handed her the cat, and ran off.

“I should feel guiltier about that than I do,” Lucy said to the cat and the blissfully quiet room, and returned to grading.

* * *

“I think we’ve got it,” Felicity said, flopping down on the couch next to Lucy. “The next time we go out, they’ll get ready, and when we get back, they’ll go out. I already talked to JARVIS. Braid my hair?” She held up a hair brush, band and pins.

“Sure,” Lucy agreed, and they resituated themselves.

“I’m going to train Clint to pilot, too. Coulson says he’s qualified on everything SHIELD’s got. Maybe Tripp, if he wants. Seems like a pretty common thing the SHIELD tactical guys cross-train.”

“Sounds good. We should have a backup, then if you get hurt or sick – it keeps me up at night, all the diseases and bacteria and everything we could be exposing ourselves to, especially if we need to eat or drink. We’ve got plenty of tactical backup now.”

“Is someone going to learn the history?”

“I was actually thinking of breaking things down by time period, giving everyone something to be an expert on. Even when I go, we usually have to split up at some point, or Steve has to do the talking because he’s the tall white guy.”

“I’m game,” Felicity agreed.

“You’ll probably be the recent past, given that you’re the baby. Of our team, anyway. Coulson’s team seems pretty young.”

“They’re good kids,” Felicity said, grinning. “I like Jemma and Fitz a lot. They’ve been working together for so long that it’s hard to understand them, when they get going, but they seem really nice. Skye’s never had formal training so there’s some style differences to our hacking, but she’s talented.”

“Should we wait for the next call out? What if Bill passed instructions about Steve to the HYDRA in the 1940s when he marked Peggy for assassination?”

“But what if Castle goes out and we don’t have the Lifeboat?”

An alarm started blaring. “Okay, you were right. One second,” Lucy said, still pinning the end of the crown braid in place. “Alright. Let’s go see when we’re going.

“April 3, 1882,” Felicity said. “Missouri.”

“The Missouri Compromise in 1820 drew a line across the Louisiana purchase, said that any state created north of 36030 would be a free state and Missouri and anything else south would be a slave state. They didn’t have a long history before the Civil War, but it made for significant racial tensions after. ’82 is right when railways are exploding in Missouri. Kansas City became a hub, and it had a tremendous effect on the economy.”

“Jesse James died April 3, 1882,” Felicity said, looking up from her computer

“Not if Frank Castle has his way,” Lucy sighed.

“Who’s suiting up?” Tripp asked, looking at Coulson.

“Three women out of four is going to limit our options in that time,” Lucy said apologetically to Peggy. Once Clint finished training as a pilot, it would give them more options. “I think Sam should go, if he’s willing.”

“Wouldn’t that limit options, just like being a woman?” Coulson asked.

“With white people, maybe. They’re not the only ones in Missouri. The first wave of the KKK was suppressed after 1871, but James and his gang wore Klan hoods in at least one of their robberies. Kansas City is the site of their second national convention in 1924 when they’re revived. Sam might look like a much friendlier face for a lot of people.”

“Point taken,” Coulson agreed.

“I’m better with a rifle,” Clint said, looking at Steve.

Lucy nodded. “I wouldn’t mind having a sniper. Steve, you can start taking Peggy through the syllabus without me.”

Steve looked at Lucy, then at Peggy.

“I’m quite alright,” Peggy said.

“Lucy-” Steve began earnestly

“With Jesse James in play, it’s probably to our advantage to not get close,” Lucy interrupted, eyes on Steve. “This isn’t about us. It’s about the mission. Now let’s get changed. We don’t have a lot of time.”

Castle hadn’t left himself much time to get to James much less to give them time to chase him. It was really a pain in her ass, how good at this he was.

* * *

Sure enough, when they found the house where Jesse James was supposed to be killed, it had two bodies. Probably the Ford brothers, who were supposed to kill Jesse James, get charged with murder, and speedily pardoned.

“He was naturally gifted, but he couldn’t be useful enough to take back to the present, right?” What if she had given him the idea, taking Peggy?

As a trigger puller? No way,” Clint shook his head. “Too much tech.”

“So Castle wants him for something now. Or within James’ new lifetime,” Lucy mused.

“We still haven’t figured out if HYDRA, or some kind of proto-HYDRA conspiracy, existed before World War Two,” Felicity said.

“The government is pretty motivated right now, though. There’s a bounty on his head. He’s not going to die of old age or anything,” Lucy said. “If he was part of a conspiracy … I would think they’d be able to control the news better. He got some good press for awhile.” She thought about Steve and Tony bonding over their Bonnie and Clyde fandom.

“But he’d be a good assassin, right now,” Sam said.

Lucy nodded. “Or a local guide. He’s spent ten years as an outlaw.”

“I know where we need to go!” Clint said excitedly.

“You do?”

“Well, no. But I know who we need to find! So we just have to ask around.”

* * *

“So who is Bass Reeves?” Felicity asked, as they walked out of town to a house on the outskirts.

“You need some cardio,” Sam said.

“You need to try walking in one of these damn dresses. Mud is heavy,” Lucy said.

“Bass Reeves is the real guy who inspired the Lone Ranger,” Clint said.

“The Lone Ranger is black?” Sam asked, seeing the man standing on his porch.

Lucy’s eyes widened and she turned to Clint. “Bass Reeves!” she said. The name had been tickling her memory since he’d asked the saloon keeper where to find the man. They’d additionally found out that James had been seen at the saloon with a man matching Castle’s description, had instigated a shootout with two lawmen that had left both of them dead, and in his haste to escape, left behind a map. They still wanted the help – the place marked was in Indian Territory, modern day Oklahoma, and just wandering in was a bad idea.

“Right?” he responded excitedly.

“I wanna know cool stuff,” Felicity said.

“He was the first black deputy US marshal west of the Mississippi,” Clint said.

“He arrested like 3000 people,” Lucy added. “Including his own son.”

“He had his belt and hat shot off but he never got shot,” Clint continued.

“Hold up, his own son?” Sam asked. Their voices were dropping lower and lower the closer they got.

“Killed his wife. Reeves insisted on being the one to bring him in. He was convicted and served his time.” Lucy couldn’t help but think of Carol. She trusted Sam, but now was hardly the time.

“That’s – that’s commitment,” Sam said.

“I’m not sure of the date on that so don’t say anything,” Lucy cautioned. The man on the porch was old enough to have a married son but she had no idea how long his son had been married before he murdered his wife.

“You got it,” Sam agreed as they approached the house.

“Hello, sir,” Clint said.

“Do I look like a ‘sir’ to you?” Reeves shot back.

“I’m a big fan,” Clint said, smiling with boyish charm. Reeves just looked confused.

“An admirer,” Lucy translated.

Reeves looked them all over, and Lucy fought down the irrational fear that he would somehow _know_ that they were time travellers. “I know what trouble looks like,” he said. “Y’all sure resemble it.”

“There’s a bad man,” Lucy said. “Who’s hurt a lot of people. And he came here to find Jesse James. We don’t know why, but we need to find them and stop them. We think they’re headed into Indian Territory.” Reeves had worked mostly in Indian Territory, had learned the local languages in the years he spent there between escaping his master and being freed by the 13th Amendment. Any of the 200 deputy marshals in the state could technically help them, but Bass Reeves was just about the only choice for navigating Indian Territory, and she was betting that he still had ties there, or at least gratitude to the people who had harboured him. Most white marshals wouldn’t much care what destruction James and Castle wrought there.

Reeves looked at her, and then the rifle strapped to Clint’s back.

“I’m not a murderer,” he said, speaking to Clint. “If you ride with me, we’re going to capture James and this man you’re chasing, not kill them.”

Clint didn’t like it. He hesitated, then looked at Lucy, who nodded, then at Sam. Bass watched the exchange with interest.

“If my people or I are fired upon I’ll return fire,” Clint said. “And I don’t miss. But I won’t fire the first shot. I’m Clint.” He offered his hand.

“And you?” Bass turned to Sam.

Sam nodded. “I’m not looking to kill anyone. I’m Sam. This is Lucy and Felicity.”

“They can stay here with my wife while we’re gone,” Bass said.

“No, sir,” Lucy said. “I’m going.” She looked at Felicity, who nodded. “We’re going with you. But we could use someplace to change clothes.”

Her 19th century go-bag had two changes of clothes in her and Felicity’s size, clothes appropriate for riding. While women weren’t supposed to wear pants, it was sometimes safer to travel as male passing. While she didn’t think they would be particularly convincing, people in these times tended to depend more on clothes to evaluate gender, since they were more reliable. From a distance, wrapped up for winter and with their hair braided up they would pass for young men. And they wouldn’t have to really fool people. Anyone who got close to them was going to have more important things to worry about.

* * *

Lucy knew from her riding lessons that riding all day was going to hurt like the devil, for all of them. Sam might be in better shape than she was, but she doubted he was accustomed to the exertion and position, not to mention the friction that riding caused. There was nothing to be done about it, though. She couldn’t insist on walking breaks, not when they were behind Castle.

By the time they stopped for the night she knew they were all aching. Clint seemed the least bothered, and Lucy seemed better off than Sam and Felicity, but she would have killed to have a hot bath and a soft mattress waiting for her instead of washing her face in a cold stream and setting up a bedroll on the frozen ground.

“How are you doing?” she asked Clint, as they sat around the fire. Her bag also had some preserved food, but they’d picked up some more appetising provision on their way out of town.

“I’m worried about what happens when we catch up,” he admitted. “James is quicker on the draw than I am, and Castle’s dangerous. I see better from a distance.”

“You’re a sniper,” Reeves said. It wasn’t a question, and Lucy knew that thinking of snipers as anything more than cowards was very modern.

“Yes, sir,” Clint said. The set of his jaw in the firelight suggested to Lucy that he knew what people generally thought of snipers, too. “It would be a lot easier for me to deal with them from a distance.”

“Who ever said ‘easy’ and ‘right’ are the same thing?” Reeves asked. “Maybe it’s different for you, but the men I’ve killed? I had to look them in the eye. I still have to look them in the eye, every time I close mine, or look in the mirror.”

Clint’s usual light-hearted nature was nowhere to be found, and Lucy was reminded of how tired he had looked when she had first seen him before he had set eyes on Coulson. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I mean, no, it isn’t different for me.”

“Can I ask you something?” Sam said, looking at Reeves.

“What?” the older man said.

“Does it bother you, that you were born in a country where it was legal for you to be considered property?”

“The original purpose of lawmen was to return runaway slaves,” Lucy added softly.

Reeves sighed. “The law ain’t perfect, but it’s all we got. If we ain’t got that, we ain’t got nothing.”

Sam nodded.

“What about bad laws like slavery?” Lucy asked, voice still quiet. The dim, uneven light of the fire made it easier to ask.

“You gonna decide what the right thing is?”

“Maybe,” she said. She had made a choice, making a plan where they allowed Lincoln to get shot. She still wondered if it had been right.

“Don’t we all do that?” Felicity asked. “Just because something is the law doesn’t make it right. I think sometimes people tell themselves that if something is the law, then it’s not their fault. That they’ve got no choice. But they do. Even if they follow the law, they can fight it. But it’s easier not to think about it.”

“My former master, and all those boys in the Confederate Army, they thought they was doing the right thing, and they was wrong. But when you decide you know better you can end up in trouble fast. It’s harder to be the good guy,” Reeves said. “It ought to be. You four ain’t from around here, that’s for certain. How far are you willing to go, to stop this bad man?”

Lucy looked away from his knowing eyes, surprised that he was watching instead of Clint, who had gone quiet, or Felicity, who he was responding to. She’d been asking herself the same question a lot lately.

“We should get some sleep,” she said, knowing it was the most transparent deflection ever. Whatever he saw on her face in the flickering light of the fire he didn’t push her.

* * *

“Could we have beaten them here?” Felicity asked, her voice quiet despite the empty cabin. By the time they’d rounded up Bass, supplies and horses, they’d been hours behind. Lucy spotted a paperback copy of _Matterhorn_ and side-stepped between it and Bass, doing a visual sweep of the cabin for anything else that looked out of place. There was only one set of footprints leaving the cabin in the snow outside. No Castle, no horses, no sign of struggle.

“Jesse James is a racist criminal show-off,” Lucy replied. “Whatever else Castle is, his best friend is black, he’s got a moral code, and he’s mission-focussed. Maybe they got into a fight.”

Felicity spun to look at Lucy, eyes wide. Lucy didn’t have an angle on what she had seen, but she had clearly come to the same conclusion that Lucy had.

“I’m gonna take a walk, find a good perch. Just in case,” Clint said, nodding to Bass.

“I wouldn’t mind a look around. Follow those footprints,” Bass agreed. “You’ll stay with them?” he asked Sam, who nodded.

“What did he want here?” Sam asked.

Lucy held up the book as Felicity held up a sleek smartphone. Lucy was no tech expert, but it had been released in the last few years.

“But the Mothership hasn’t jumped here. I mean, I guess maybe they dropped someone off in 1865, but that’s a lot of time to kill.” Sam shook his head. “I did that to a guy, I wouldn’t be expecting a friendly welcome.”

“Good, cause I’m not feeling too friendly. No sudden moves, Goldilocks.”

Lucy saw the rifle barrel first, sticking through the door and pointing at Felicity. Then another step and the book fell from lifeless fingers, and when she glanced at Felicity for confirmation. The other woman clearly recognised him, too. “Grant?”

Grant Ward, her dead fiancé, swung his head her way and gaped. “Lucy?”

Next thing that she remembered, she had her arms wrapped around his neck and he was wiping tears away as gently as he could with a thumb like sandpaper.

“It’s okay, baby,” he murmured.

“What’s happening?” Sam asked.

“This is Lucy’s fiancé,” Felicity said. “He was a test pilot. He – he was supposed to have gotten killed.”

Grant pulled her right up against him and she hid her face against his neck, not caring that it had obviously been awhile since he’d had a shower. “It’s a long story,” he said. “How’d you find me? And what are you doing here?” he asked Lucy, leaning back to look at her.

“It’s a long story,” she echoed.

“I’m starting to think God is a romantic,” Sam said. Lucy looked at him. Two missions in a row, his teammates had been reunited with “dead” loved ones. “Don’t you dare,” he cautioned, anticipating the apology on her lips.

“How long has it been, for you?” Grant asked.

“Over a year,” she said. “It’s – it’s November, right?”

“December,” Felicity corrected. “Hanukkah's coming up soon.”

“For you?” Lucy asked.

“Two years.”

“That’s a long time,” she said. Sure he was out here away from civilization, but was he alone? Had he moved out here because he’d married a local woman? Sure, he had known that she was alive in the present, but she was a hundred and fifty years away, and he had no reason to think he’d be rescued. He’d had just as much right to move on as she did. He’d always been able to read her, and instead of saying anything, he just kissed her deeply.

It was like she was feeling too many things to be contained in her body. She could hear her heartbeat pounding in her ears, and she had almost a fight-or-flight adrenaline response. Were her hands shaking? Grant’s hands were on either side of her face, and he’d pull back between hungry kisses to just look at her. She’d forgotten that Sam and Felicity and anyone else existed until Bass Reeves cleared his throat.

“Oh, um, hello,” she said, flushed. “Uh – sorry, I – this was a surprise.”

“I take it this isn’t the very bad man travelling with Jesse James?” Reeves asked dryly.

“No,” Lucy said. “He’s – we were engaged, and got separated.”

“It’s a long story,” the four of them chorused together.

“Uh-huh. Well, Barton said he’s fine to take first watch,” Reeves said. “No sense leaving this close to dark. Even if your boys are on their way, we’re better off with cover.”

* * *

Lucy woke to movement.

“Sorry,” Sam whispered, when he saw her raise her head. “Bathroom.”

Lucy nodded and settled back down between Felicity and Grant. The three of them were crammed together on the bed, since it had been decided that the women should get the bed but Grant refused to be out of arm’s reach of Lucy since they had reunited. Reeves and Sam were on the floor. Then, just as she was drifting back to sleep, a gunshot rang out.

“Sam’s out there,” she said, sitting bolt upright.

“Stay here,” Grant ordered, grabbing the Winchester hunting rifle. Felicity leaned against the wall behind the door with a shotgun and nodded at Lucy. She was good.

“Like hell,” Lucy muttered, and followed the men out. They’d all slept close to fully dressed, but it was bitter cold outside. She spread out, just like the others, fingers curled around the cold steel of a Colt revolver. 

* * *

Despite his diligence, Clint hadn’t really expected anyone to attack in the bitter cold night. His eyes were better than most, and there was a decent moon, but Castle would have been better off setting up an ambush on the way back to the Lifeboat and Mothership.

But Castle wasn’t present. Sneaking through the trees was only one man. Even with his eyes, Clint couldn’t identify him, but if it was just one guy, he suspected that it was James, and he had made a promise. He didn’t have much of a shot anyway, so he fired a warning to the occupants of the cabin and dropped out of the tree. The impact of the ground hurt his cold feet, but he knew better than to allow any part of his body to become inoperable in the field and it didn’t slow him down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming up next:   
> It felt like it had been ages since she’d had fast food and she had to admit, it was good, even if fountain soda was watery and terrible. Grant was full of stories and she didn’t have to do much of the talking.  
> The last thing she remembered was feeling a little dizzy when they stood up to leave.
> 
> Kudos and comments are always appreciated!


	17. You'll remember you belong to me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> Just as Lucy was drifting back to sleep, a gunshot rang out.  
> “Sam’s out there,” she said, sitting bolt upright.  
> “Stay here,” Grant ordered, grabbing the Winchester hunting rifle. Felicity leaned against the wall behind the door with a shotgun and nodded at Lucy. She was good.  
> “Like hell,” Lucy muttered, and followed the men out. They’d all slept close to fully dressed, but it was bitter cold outside. She spread out, just like the others, fingers curled around the cold steel of a Colt revolver.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by some Agents of SHIELD stuff, and one line stolen from Flashpoint.

Sam cursed himself for going outside without a weapon. That was some dumbass rookie shit, and led to being in the dark woods alone staring down a guy who was almost certainly Jesse James, with a revolver on either hip. They said that 17 feet was the distance you wanted to keep as the guy with the gun, and Sam was within that, but Jesse James was a master of the quick draw. It was how he’d made his living, how he’d stayed alive, so Sam kept his hands half raised, palms out. The gunshot hadn’t come from the same direction he’s seen James come from, which meant that Clint had seen him, which meant that help was coming.

Problem was, James knew that too. Was he outnumbered, or were Castle and his crew out there?

“You really Bass Reeves? Rumour is you’re so fast with a Colt you've been banned from every shooting competition in the West. It’s a rare challenge to face off against you.” Sam took a second to consider the wisest answer and just plain stall for time, reminded of the saloon owner’s story – how James had identified himself to the lawmen, had bragged and boasted about his own legend. James wanted Sam to rush him with those pistols still in the holster, wanted to see what would happen. If it came down to hand to hand Sam had zero concerns about his chances. It was just those damn guns and James’ hands hovering near them. There was no downside to pulling them for James, and Sam was running out of time.

“Hands up, James,” said Clint, a little breathless. Sam breathed a sigh of relief.

The man slowly put his hands up.

“Gun down,” Bass Reeves ordered, training one pistol on Clint and one on James. He looked from one to the other.

“He ought to be dead,” Clint said, sounding uncertain.

“We’ll take him to jail and he’ll face justice.”

“What if he gets out and kills more people?”

Sam thought about crossing the distance and taking those pistols from James. Reeves and Clint were distracted, and as good as they both were, it only took a heartbeat for someone's to end.

“You got a choice here, son,” Reeves said.

Again, the sound of a gunshot shattered the stillness of the winter forest. Sam looked back at Clint, but the shot hadn’t come from him. They both turned to see Lucy, at exactly the right angle to guarantee her shot wouldn’t sail past or through James and hit someone else, gun still pointed at James. Sam moved to the body, removing the guns and checking his pulse. He was already dead, shot through the heart.

“We had a deal!” Reeves was furious. Lucy, looking pale to Sam even in the dim lighting, finally dragged her eyes away from the body and lowered the gun.

“You didn’t ask me to promise anything,” she said, sounding cold. Knowing her, Sam could see how brittle the hard exterior was, but he wasn’t sure about Reeves.

“Baby?” Grant said, sounding lost. She stepped back and away from him.

* * *

Lucy was quiet on the ride home, barely reacting even when she tried to give Reeves the reward money and he reacted with disgust, even when Grant got angry in her defense.

“Leave it,” Clint said, before Sam could, stepping in between them and chivvying Grant along.

When they got back to the Lifeboat it was decided that Felicity, Sam and Clint would go back first. Lucy didn’t say anything, even though she could feel the worry emanating from her friends. Felicity hugged her before getting in the Lifeboat, and she forced herself not to recoil from the touch.

“The Lucy I knew would never have shot that man,” Grant said, when the clearing was quiet.

“I’m not the Lucy you knew,” she said. “And I won’t hold you to any promises you made to her.” She couldn’t stop thinking about the way he had looked at her in the woods, wary and shocked. She felt uneasy and wrong around him, like trying to squeeze into a pair of jeans that didn’t fit anymore.

“Whoa,” Grant said. “Hey, princess, no. I didn’t mean it like that. Just – talk to me. What happened?”

“We’re supposed to protect the timeline. Jesse James is supposed to die. Jailbreaks and pardons aren’t unusual in this era, and his death – you think his legend would play out the same even if he stayed in prison? And I could see Clint’s face. He knew he was supposed to, but it would cost something, to break that promise. And – we were at the Alamo. Tony tried to do the right thing, and this drunk rapist shot him. And I had a gun, and I could have stopped it, and I didn’t. I tried to talk him down, and Tony died, and I still wake up sometimes feeling that blood on my hands.” She registered that she was crying. “If I have to wake thinking about Jesse James, frankly it’ll be an improvement.”

Grant put an arm around her and kissed her temple. “You’ll be okay,” he promised. “I’ll be there, when you wake up. Right?” She leaned into him and nodded.

The Lifeboat took longer than she had anticipated to get back. “Sorry,” Felicity said when they climbed in. “We figured that Grant should probably see a doctor at a proper base, so we were figuring out a landing site.”

The hanger they zapped into was empty of people except for Hill, and Lucy wondered what the cover story was. Felicity had to leave again immediately to pick up Coulson’s team and take them back for frozen Steve, but she unbuckled and gave Lucy another hug.

“I’m okay,” Lucy said, not even sure if it was a lie. She was aching all over from the riding, but she couldn’t find the words to make a joke about it before she got out of the Lifeboat and Felicity zapped off again.

Hill walked them to medical, where Lucy got a quick check and was then taken to the living quarters while Grant got more thoroughly evaluated. Hill left her in a room much like the ones in the bunker – bed, wardrobe with grey sweatpants, hoodies and t-shirts in a variety of sizes and bedside table, attached bathroom with hotel-like toiletries and towels. This one, blessedly, had a bathtub. Hill, or someone working for her, had left Epsom salts, and Lucy poured a scalding hot bath and laid in it until it had cooled. She tried to keep her mind busy with figuring out why Castle hadn’t been at the cabin, why he had pointed James in their direction, where and when he would strike next, but she couldn’t focus on anything, not even thoughts of James. All in all, could have been worse. She probably shouldn’t be relieved to be separated from Grant again, but she knew that was her own emotional turmoil and felt guilty that she wasn’t giving him the homecoming he deserved. She dried off, dressed, and retraced her steps to medical.

“We’re going to keep you guys here on base overnight while some of the tests are processed,” said the friendly doctor. “But so far everything checks out.”

“I told them I’m fine,” Grant said.

“I’ve pulled shrapnel out of agents who said they were ‘fine’,” the doctor said dryly. She gave them directions to the mess hall, but as soon as they left Grant turned to Lucy.

“Most of the med staff doesn’t live on base,” he said. “Which means they go home at night. Which means we are somewhere halfway civilized. Let’s go get a burger, baby.”

“Why don’t we check the cafeteria?” Lucy suggested. “Let’s just see what they have.”

“No, I want a real burger. Something greasy and full of trans fats. Baby, I’ve been in the nineteenth century for two years, I deserve this.”

“I can talk to Hill,” she agreed reluctantly.

“Why bother her? It’s always better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. Didn’t Stark teach you anything? That’s one of his life philosophies. That and always be drunk.”

“A sound example to follow.” She was getting a headache.

“Luce, come on.” He cocked his head at her.

“Fine,” she agreed. “Whatever you want.”

They went down to the parking lot and he told her to wait while he checked out a vehicle. She didn’t know how he managed that given that he didn’t have any id, let alone SHIELD id, but he’d always been charming and when he came back shaking the keys triumphantly she just shook her head.

It felt like it had been ages since she’d had fast food and she had to admit, it was good, even if fountain soda was watery and terrible. Grant was full of stories and she didn’t have to do much of the talking.

The last thing she remembered was feeling a little dizzy when they stood up to leave.

* * *

She regained consciousness tied to a chair in a windowless room. Shaking off the confusion took a long moment, and her mouth was dry as the Sahara. She’d been drugged? Where was Grant? How had HYDRA gotten to them? Did they have someone in SHIELD still who had given a heads up to an agent who had gotten to their food? That was a huge security problem, but not one that she could help while tied to a chair. She felt herself starting to hyperventilate and focussed on the present. The walls were grey concrete, darker than her borrowed clothes. The clothes were soft against her skin, good quality cotton. She was a little cold, and the room felt damp and cold. Basement? Her legs, ass, and back still ached from the riding, and her head ached from the drug, but she didn’t have any additional pains. She couldn’t hear traffic or sounds of city – or any – life. Grounded, she looked for surveillance, but couldn’t see anything. Next she checked the ropes tying her hands together and to the chair behind her back. They were solid, too tight to wiggle out of, with knots that tightened when she pulled experimentally. She checked the chair next, but it was solid metal and bolted to the floor. Attempts to move it only resulted in her shoulders getting yanked as the rope and the chair held.

She could scream, but it didn’t look like the kind of place where she was likely to be overheard, and the competency of the kidnapping made her think it was unlikely to do much beyond alerting her kidnappers. Maybe she might as well? But if they wanted information, they could start torturing her. Lucy had no illusions; everyone broke sooner or later, and she had no training in resisting physical or psychological pain.

How long would it take to notice she was missing? Would SHIELD just assume that they had gone to bed? The plan had been to spend the night. How had Grant gotten the car keys – would the SHIELD agent remember and raise the alarm when they didn’t make it back, or keep quiet out of fear for their job? How long had it even been? She’d rescued Grant from the nineteenth century and immediately gotten him into this mess. Some fiancée she was.

The door opened, and in walked Grant.

“Hey, baby,” he said. “You’re awake.”

She didn’t want to believe what his casual, unrestrained presence implied. “What the fuck is happening?” she asked.

“You want some water?”

“Is it going to be drugged?”

“You’re mad at me,” he said with something like a pout.

“I don’t understand what’s happening,” she confessed, her voice cracking with emotion.

“In our original timeline, you cut your mom off, and she gave you a few years to come around, but you didn’t. She and John made a deal and I was assigned to bring you back into the fold.”

“I think I’m going to be sick,” Lucy said. She felt dizzy, like all the blood was rushing out of her head. “You’re a Nazi.”

“I’m not a Nazi!” For the first time, she caught a glimpse of an anger that terrified her, before he pulled the mask back on and got back to the story he’d walked in intending to tell. “But I fell for you, baby. For real. That’s why John parked me in the nineteenth century for awhile. He was worried I was getting too attached. But I forgive you and now we’re going to get you on the same page as the rest of us.”

The bottom dropped out of her stomach. They were going to brainwash her, to take away everything that made her herself. Memories that weren’t shared with anyone, or only with Foggy – Foggy, who might never know what happened to her. They’d induce her to do things that were completely against her beliefs, hurt her friends, crush dissent. Grant cupped her cheek in one hand and she leaned away as far as her bonds would allow.

“John put you in time-out in the nineteenth century and you think I’m the one you need to forgive? That’s some Nazi shit alright.”

Her head snapped sideways and she tasted blood.

“You don’t talk to me like that,” he said, voice low and dangerous.

“Maybe you can brainwash me into pretending to love you again,” Lucy said. “I won’t know the difference. But I want you to remember that the real me could never love a pathetic, boot-licking fascist.” She kicked at his knee, missing the angle that she’d wanted to dislocate it.

He swore and stepped closer, to the side where she couldn’t get a good angle to kick. He wrapped his hand around her throat. Her heart, already pounding fast, kicked up another notch. “You’ll remember how to love me. What’s the line again?  _ I will kill your friends and family to remind you of my love. _ ”

“Your mother would be so proud,” she said, throat flexing against his hand. It tightened. For a minute she still struggled to breathe, then she started to thrash against the ropes. It was instinctive rather than calculated, and her body was going to give before the ropes did, but she was well past that kind of rational thought, seeing spots before he eased off to give her a breath, then clamping down again until the world began going grey.

An alarm started blaring, and the pressure eased. She coughed, the feeling like needles in her throat, and gasped. Her eyes were streaming tears.

“I have to go take care of that. He smirked. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Lucy wanted to come up with a sassy, Whedon-esque sarcastic retort, but her eyes were still streaming, her throat was bruised to hell, and she was still mentally reeling from the roller coaster of Grant returning from the dead and then turning out to be HYDRA. Her brain refused to move past the knowledge that this was the man her mother had chosen for her.

As soon as the door closed behind them, she was moving again, driven more by panic than reason. She tested the ropes again, gasping in pain as she realised that her thrashing had torn the skin at her wrists at some point. She didn’t have anything to cut herself free and couldn’t see anything sharp in the bare room, even if she’d been able to reach it. She tried the chair again, biting back a whimper of pain. Nothing. She’d break before getting the bolts out of the floor or breaking the chair.

She blinked back tears. They wouldn’t help, but she  _ hated  _ feeling helpless. Everyone did, she supposed, but Tony hadn’t been wrong about her trust issues. Even knowing that Steve and the others were probably in the facility didn’t set her at ease. She tried to scream – at least now there was someone friendly to hear her – and broke off with a choked off gasp. Awesome. She couldn’t even cry out for help.

She didn’t have time to wallow. The door was kicked in, but instead of Steve or Sam or one of the others standing there, it was Frank Castle, bloody and wild-eyed. He swept the room for threats before looking at her, and she successfully fought off the urge to sob in relief.

“Found her!” he shouted. He produced a knife that he used to cut her free.

“Christ. Can you walk?” he asked, tone gentler as his eyes stayed fixed on her throat. Lucy nodded vehemently. She wasn’t emotionally prepared to go full damsel, and the ache of overused muscles barely registered. He silently offered a Glock 19. She hesitated a second before taking it, deliberately not comparing it to the Colt, and flicking the safety off.

Frank nodded approvingly. “Stay behind me.” She nodded and held up her left hand with index finger and thumb in a circle and the other three fingers raised –  _ I understand _ . He’d seen her use tactical signs before Bonnie and Clyde and nodded.

“Stay behind me,” he repeated. He turned to face the door and she put her left hand on his back.

They walked past bodies, but whatever HYDRA personnel had survived the initial attack hadn’t stuck around. Hoyle was in the corridor, and they made it up a flight of stairs and out into a waiting van without incident. It was a house in the middle of nowhere rather than a proper base. A white man Lucy had never seen with a mop of tight curls – their pilot? – drove, and a teenage girl with carefully waved blonde-brown hair and heavy eye makeup was in the passenger seat, with a white knuckle grip on another Glock 19.

There were no seats in the back, just a couple of duffels. Lucy crawled until she could put her back to the door of the driver’s side wall and brought her knees to her chest. After retrieving the gun from the teenager, Castle settled on her side, leaving a generous amount of space between them and a clear line to the back door. Hoyle settled on the other side. Neither of them tried to take Lucy’s gun, though she flipped the safety back on.

“We’ve got a first aid kit,” Hoyle said, his eyes on her wrists. “You need it now, or when we stop?”

“Stop,” Lucy croaked, making Hoyle wince.

“I’m going to kill him,” Frank growled.

Lucy’s head snapped right, surprised that Grant had fled. But then, she supposed she didn’t know him at all. She only half-heard Frank’s increasingly violent threats –  _ promises _ – as her breath got shallow again.

“Frank!” The sharp voice of the teenage girl, loud in the small space – huh, that probably wasn’t helping matters – cut through the fog in Lucy’s mind. “Can you pretend you’re not the Terminator for like five seconds?” the girl demanded, gesturing at Lucy.

“Yeah, Frank. Jesus,” said the driver.

“Yeah, Frank,” Hoyle echoed, an unrepentant grin on his face.

She looked at Frank, who was glaring at the girl, making a  _ cut it out _ gesture.

“I’m fine,” she forced herself to say, making Hoyle wince again. She pulled her knees a little closer, biting back a hiss of pain when she wasn’t cautious enough about her wrists.

The girl sighed heavily, pure teenage frustration. “Did the super serum fix his brain or is Captain America just as much of a dumbass as these boys?” she asked. “I’m not like, a huggy person, but if no one else is going to  _ get over themselves _ -”

“Amy, stop,” Frank said flatly. “She was just kidnapped and tortured, the last thing she wants is for terrorists with actual blood on their hands-” He broke off sharply, teeth coming together with a click as he looked at Lucy. He scooted over and put an arm over Lucy’s shoulders. “Okay?” he asked cautiously. She nodded and leaned into him, body shuddering in relief at the  _ safe _ and  _ warm _ of another human being. Maybe not just any human being. She’d always felt safe around Frank, had put it down to him needing her to go back with the journal, but she wasn’t sure anymore that was how time travel worked. She’d blamed herself for having shitty instincts, but she’d ignored and rationalised away her instincts about Grant and look where that had gotten her.

“I don’t know why anyone argues with me,” Amy said to herself.

“Because you’re a pain in the ass?” suggested the driver. “Ow! Hey, I’m driving here. Look, I’m pretty sure we’re clear, where are we going?”

“Bus station,” Frank said.

“With you two looking like that?” Curt asked. Unlike Frank, he had managed to get out of the compound with just a scratch on the arm.

“We’ll clean up. You three are getting on buses out of here.”

“Wait, what do you mean?” Amy demanded.

“Bill took the Mothership, and the journal,” Frank said. “I’m gonna to turn myself in. But I need you three to get clear first.”

“You’re just going to dump me?”

“Frank, we’re in this together!”

“I followed you through Afghanistan and time. You think I’m leaving you now?”

“I didn’t ask for a vote. This is how it’s gonna be.”

“I thought we were fighting for democracy.” It felt like the voices were at a remove, like she wasn’t fully grounded in her body.

“When you’re the democratically elected team leader you get to make autocratic decisions,” Frank said, deadpan.

“Wait, when did we vote on you being team leader? I want to be team leader,” Amy protested. “I’d be a great leader.”

“Hey, Lucy?” Hoyle said, moving the prosthetic leg that had been stretched out so he could scoot closer to her. “Lucy? Breathe nice and slow for me, okay.”

Her breath, she realised, was rapid and shallow. She was sweating and shivering all at once, and the general sky-is-falling feeling, while not inappropriate to recent life events, was familiar.

“Panic,” she forced out.

“You’ve had a panic attack before?” Hoyle asked.

She nodded. Ever since her first kidnapping, as a child. Not often, but more when she was under stress. If she’d been thinking-

“Breathe with me,” Hoyle said, taking an exaggeratedly deep breath. She wanted to snap at him that she wasn’t a child, she wasn’t stupid, and she knew how to breathe, but she didn’t have the air or the motivation to force the words through her throat, and she knew that it wasn’t fair. “Da-Micro, stop somewhere.”

“There’s a gas station coming up,” he said. “Hold on.”

Lucy curled her fingers into her palms hard, welcoming the small sharp pain of her nails digging in. It was real and physical and helped with the floaty feeling in her head. She was fine. She was safe – probably. Even if she wasn’t, her team would be looking for her. She forced one hand open on the floor of the van. It was bumpy, ridged, made of or covered in hard rubber. The floor was black, the walls white like the outside. She rubbed her hand over her thigh, feeling the soft cotton of the sweatpants against her clammy skin. Finally Hoyle and Frank opened the back door of the van and she was out like a shot, ignoring the dizziness to respond to the voice inside that said  _ runrunrun _ . She didn’t actually run, but she breathed easier being from the enclosed space and able to pace the parking lot.

“What do you need?” Frank asked. She shook her head at him. She didn’t need anything but time and space to walk. She was vaguely aware of the girl – Amy, Frank had called her Amy – going into the convenience store and returning. They were parked behind the gas station, and Frank and Hoyle stowed their gear and cleaned up enough to go into the bathroom without Frank looking like a serial killer.

“Lucy,” Hoyle called, and held up the med kit. She took a second to evaluate her body. Her breathing was under control. She was still stressed but she didn’t feel like she was dying. She was shivering, but the sweat was drying so that was probably normal. And it was cold. It was winter, she realised. Frank was digging through a duffel and held out a sweater to her without looking. She pulled it on, careful about her wrists, and then sat to let Hoyle treat them. The sweater dwarfed her, of course, but that was kind of comforting.

“You want something to eat?” Amy asked. “Frank didn’t know what you liked.” She held out a selection of candy bars. Lucy smiled and shook her head, moving the fingers of her right hand, held flat, to her lips and then out toward Amy. Hoyle had wrapped both wrists in gauze and was just taping down the left when a helicopter descended, big black SUVs pulling in to block their escape routes. She jolted back into fight-or-flight mode until she saw Peggy step out of a car, gun drawn. The other team looked at Frank, who slowly raised his hands. Lucy moved toward Peggy, who holstered her gun and let Sam and Steve walk toward the others. Clint was probably hanging out of the helicopter or something ridiculous.

“You look like you’ve had a bloody awful day,” she said. Lucy nodded, tears gathering in her eyes, and let Peggy fold her into a proper hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a wild week and I don't think I'm alone in concern for what's going to happen to my American neighbours. Take care of yourselves!
> 
> Coming up:  
> “What am I missing?” Lucy asked, the words hoarse and raspy. You could hear a pin drop in the room.  
> “Nothing,” Skye said quickly, beginning to type blatant nonsense like a Hollywood actor pretending to code.  
> “Maybe we should step outside,” Coulson said.


	18. I don’t want to fight but I won’t apologise for doing what’s right

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter fought me really hard, and in the end I just punted the most problematic part to next chapter, but next week will probably be easier in other ways. I want to note that I'm neither Deaf nor Hard of Hearing and neither is Lucy. She's more fluent in ASL than I am and I am happy to correct any errors that you see if you're more knowledgable than I am. It's tricky trying to translate a visual language to print and the sentence structure is a little different from English so I compromised some in places to make sure that the meaning came across in the text. Hopefully that just reads as Lucy having less than perfect fluency. I also tend to use italics to signal several different these-words-are-in-quotes-but-not-spoken things (they're written, signed, or it's JARVIS speaking) but I think it's clear from context? I don't know, my brain is a little scrambled at the moment. Fingers crossed.

Lucy fell asleep in the Quinjet and woke up back at their home base.

“Home sweet bunker,” Felicity said.

“Be it ever so humble,” Lucy rasped. She got another round of careful hugs from Felicity and Peter, and unsubtly sidestepped one from Skye, the only member of her own team who had been left behind in the present. She didn’t have anything against the younger girl, but she wasn’t in a mental state where she wanted to touch near-strangers.

May had flown the Quinjet in and took her debrief, which was entirely written. She read it a page behind Lucy and had a couple of clarifying questions, but between her childhood, her academic training and the missions, Lucy knew how to write a pretty thorough witness statement. Lucy couldn’t help but remember the last time she’d been kidnapped. May had been warmer then, gentler. She didn’t know if it was the difference between a child and an adult survivor, a difference in timelines, or a matter of what had happened in her life in the interim. Felicity asked her if she wanted to call Foggy, who hadn’t been informed of the kidnapping at all. Lucy signed to Clint that she would call when she was feeling more able to speak, took a long shower with the water as hot as she could stand it, and crashed again. Between the time travel and the drugging, she had no idea where her sleep cycle was, but a panic attack was always enough to exhaust her.

She woke up feeling miles better, but still like shit. The bruising on her throat had developed further, but she still needed to eat. She ran into Tripp in the kitchen.

“Cap’s all squared away,” he said, anticipating her question. The plan had been to move him to some kind of bio-regenerative pod that Fitz and Simmons had created, which would keep him in stasis until the time he ought to have been found, just in case time was supposed to loop. “Can I make you something? Grilled cheese and soup, maybe?”

She nodded and smiled in thanks, then went off to find a notebook to properly express herself.

She got all of the soup and most of the sandwich down before she asked Tripp if he knew how Castle’s debrief was going, and he told her with surprise that none of the captured Mothership travellers were onsite. She stormed off to find Coulson immediately.

“ _You did what?_ ” She signed it emphatically when just the sharp intake of breath hurt her throat.

Coulson blinked and she repeated the signs slower. “SHIELD’s prisons have been compromised. He’ll be safe there.”

 _“Never gang hit prison,”_ Lucy retorted, stumbling and fingerspelling several words with frustration.

“Castle can take care of himself, and he’s a criminal.”

 _“Now journal H-Y-D-R-A!”_ she signed. _“He will talk to me.”_

“He doesn’t get to decide who he talks to,” Coulson said, folding his arms.

“Wait,” Lucy said aloud, despite the discomfort. “You just shipped him off to somewhere he could get murdered without even talking to me? Because of some head game you think he’s playing?” She shook her head and stalked away to the science lab, where Felicity and Skye were hanging out with Fitz and Simmons. Felicity saw the storm clouds on her face and pushed back from her computer after tapping a few keys to bring up a text box.

 _“I need something that will scramble the security footage at Ryker’s, but not alert the guards until after I’m gone,”_ Felicity read out for her. She looked at Fitz, who looked to Coulson for guidance.

“I … don’t think I can do that?” he replied.

“ _The CIA could manage it ten years ago._ ”

“Yeah, but the prison security probably wasn’t as good then,” Skye said. “Right, Coulson?”

Coulson didn't reply. 

“I could wipe the footage, but I’d have to be on-site,” Felicity interjected.

 _“We’d need tactical backup for you, then_ ,” Lucy typed.

“What about you?” Coulson asked.

 _“Do you think I need protection from Castle or from the HYDRA guards_ ?” she shot back, Felicity autocorrecting her typos. Lucy usually didn’t have to type faster than she could compose professional, academic sentences, and she wasn’t usually furious and still on an adrenaline-hypervigilance cocktail. “ _Lis, if I sort that, what kind of prep time and equipment do you need?”_

“I haven’t authorised this mission,” Coulson said calmly.

 _“I’m not a SHIELD employee,”_ Lucy typed. _“If you want to arrest me, go ahead. If you think I’m compromised, you should have me in a cell. But I don’t work for anyone anymore. I abandoned my brother to live in a bunker when I’m not risking my life. I have the most experience with time travel, the most knowledge of history, and the most face-time with Castle. You didn’t even consult me before you sent him away, all because he wanted to talk to me? You’re not my boss and you’re certainly not my father. I have a job to do.”_ Looking at Felicity put Skye in her line of sight, so there was no missing Skye’s shocked, guilty expression. Felicity reacted to Fitz and Simmons, who looked the same. Lucy turned to Coulson, who had more of a poker face, and then back to Felicity, who shook her head. She didn’t know what was going on.

“What am I missing?” she asked, the words hoarse and raspy. You could hear a pin drop in the room.

“Nothing,” Skye said quickly, beginning to type blatant nonsense like a Hollywood actor pretending to code.

“Maybe we should step outside,” Coulson said.

What had her mother said about her biological father? She’d been asked to evaluate him for recruitment and he was deemed unsuitable. At the time Lucy had assumed that she meant for SHIELD, but now – maybe he had been a SHIELD agent being evaluated for HYDRA recruitment.

“Are you okay?” Skye asked. Lucy looked at her but she was talking to Coulson. “Want me to-?”

“No, that’s alright,” he said, smiling at her with reassurance.

Lucy felt jealousy burning ugly and hot in her gut. She turned to Felicity, raising her eyebrows in question.

“I can round up the equipment and be ready in less than an hour,” she replied, clearly shaken by the news.

Lucy nodded and walked out of the room, followed by Coulson, but she didn’t stop.

“Lucy,” he said. “We should talk about this.”

She stopped and turned to face him. “ _Before me knew who_?” she signed carefully.

“Just my team,” he said. “Skye figured it out from some hacking she’d done.”

_“How long you knew?”_

He looked away.

She smiled bitterly at her feet, nodding. That long, huh? _“Job I have,”_ she signed, stepping backwards.

“Before I knew Carol was HYDRA, but after you started studying history,” Coulson said. “You walked away from this life-”

She shook her head. Children who didn’t follow their parents’ career path didn’t choose not to have parents.

“I wanted to find the right time.”

She pointed emphatically at the room and signed _“Strangers!”_

“They’re strangers to you, but not to me,” he said. “We’re like a family, Skye especially. She’s the dau-”

Lucy walked away, rage the only thing keeping the hurt at bay. _The daughter he’d never had_ , indeed. The reasons she’d been drawn into SHIELD kept shifting under her feet. Hill had said that Coulson and Fury were close. Maybe he’d brought her in for that reason. She supposed that it was better than the other side of her family, but damn did the secret hurt. Just another parent she wasn’t quite good enough for.

She found Steve and Sam in the training room with Clint, Peggy and Tripp and eyed the heavy bag with interest. Maybe she’d feel better if she went a few rounds. Then she remembered the irritated and broken skin on her wrists and shelved the idea.

 _“I need someone to help Felicity break into Riker’s surveillance system,”_ she signed slowly, Clint translating and supplying the signs when she was reduced to finger spelling.

“So you need backup as well, then,” Peggy said. It wasn’t a question. Lucy shrugged, the most graceful acceptance of help she could manage just then.

 _“Coulson doesn’t approve. He doesn’t want me talking to Castle, because apparently missing out on the teenage years means he’s entitled to fuck with my job and the preservation of the timeline.”_ Clint flinched and rubbed the back of his neck. She’d expected that he had known, but it hurt all the same. Clint was her favourite SHIELD addition. “He’s my biological father,” she clarified, for the benefit of those who _hadn’t_ been keeping a secret from her. _“His team knew, so you should. Road trip?”_

“Just let me freshen up,” Peggy said.

“Yeah, I’ll grab a shower,” Steve agreed, looking down at his sweat-dampened t-shirt.

“Don’t leave without me,” Sam added.

Lucy nodded and went to find Amy.

* * *

Lucy opened the driver’s side door and just pointed until Steve moved to the backseat of the SUV. It wasn’t one of the black ones that might have well have had ‘Federal Agents’ bedazzled on the side, but a serviceable used soccer mom vehicle in dark blue. Steve squeezed past Peggy and Sam to sit in the back bench seat with something perilously close to a pout. Felicity kicked off her running shoes and put her sock feet on the dash.

“So, Lucy,” Sam said slowly, as Felicity tried to find something on the radio.

“Caseload,” she said, reminding him of when they had decided that everyone who slept with a weapon in arm’s reach was on his and everyone else was her problem. At the time, she’d had a therapist, but it wasn’t Sam’s fault that she had been HYDRA. She also didn’t say that she’d honestly considered a taser on her bedside table and decided against it for precisely this reason.

“I can still be your friend,” Sam said. “We don’t have to talk about it now. But don’t think I didn’t notice that you decided to drive to avoid signing. I can fingerspell.”

Lucy sighed. She knew it wasn’t Coulson’s fault that her zombie fiancé and her former future father in law and her pretend fiancé and her shrink who was her pretend fiancé’s real girlfriend and her mother all turned out to be Nazis, but she was just really really tired of being the last to know things about the people who were supposed to be closest to her.

* * *

“You shouldn’t be here,” Frank said, when they walked into the isolation room in the infirmary.

“You look like rough road,” Lucy replied, as Amy had told her to. It was something of an act of trust, assuming that the coded phrase wasn’t indicating that she was being tortured or something, but trust had to start somewhere and Lucy understood why Amy wasn’t feeling it. On its face it wasn’t untrue, although she was one to talk. The guards who had checked them through security and caught them up on Frank’s time here were definitely speculating about what had happened to her. His palm was heavily bandaged, the rest of him looked exhausted, and she knew he’d been stabbed at least once. From what she’d seen on the security tapes, he’d turned enough to make it a glancing blow. The exposed knuckles of his other hand were torn. She tapped them. He pulled his hand back with a scowl. He knew better than to fight that way. It was far safer to prevent injury by using your opponent’s momentum and running them into hard surfaces, using elbows and knees and the heel of the hand rather than risk breaking the comparatively delicate bones of the hand.

Whether it was the teasing or the message from Amy, it took him a moment to get back on track. “I don’t want to talk to them.”

“I don’t care what he wants,” Steve said, flashing his fake badge and gesturing the guard out.

“You don’t know who that guy is,” Frank growled. “Or what he’ll have waiting for you when you leave.”

Lucy looked at Steve. “If he’s HYDRA he probably recognised me, and I’m betting they can’t scramble a Captain America-worthy tactical assault in the amount of time that we’ll be here,” he said.

Frank rolled his eyes. “What do you want to know?” he asked, looking at Lucy.

“Are you okay in here?” Steve asked, after another silent prompt from Lucy. “Coulson thinks you’ll be safe.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m sure the lifer who tried to shank me in the chow line had a real good reason,” Frank said.

“You make friends everywhere you go.” Steve said, scowling back at Frank as hard as Frank was scowling at him. Lucy should have fought harder for Sam as her escort. “She didn’t know.” He added, relenting slightly to Lucy’s glare. “She disagrees with Coulson’s decision.”

“Hill already knows. She came by the bunker to recruit Micro. Running it up the flagpole won’t do shit.”

“Some people do crosswords,” Lucy croaked. “Some people are raised to believe that their father died in prison after he got framed by the CIA and find that the most soothing thing to do on sleepless nights is plan prison escapes.”

Steve stared at the side of her head with wide eyes. Had she not been clear about her intentions? Whatever. She had read his file backwards and forwards. He was the undisputed King of Terrible Ideas, and this plan was admittedly still a work in progress.

“Did you know? About my father?”

“Everyone knows _of_ Hannibal,” Frank said, looking taken aback by the topic change. “Why?”

“No reason,” Lucy said. “Here’s the plan.”

* * *

Frank got into the trunk, closed it behind himself, and Felicity pulled away. There had been even more debate about seating this time around, and they’d put Felicity, the least tactically capable, behind the wheel of the car. Lucy offered to be in the backseat, citing her height and Castle’s demonstrable interest in her wellbeing, and after losing the argument due to Lucy still having zero fucks to give, Steve and Sam were in the middle with Peggy in the passenger seat.

Lucy held out a pair of Steve’s pants and a shirt and pointed to a blanket. He took the clothes and ducked under it.

“What about Curt?” he demanded, voice still muffled.

 _“I’m going to have a calm, rational discussion with Coulson where I use reason and possibly guilt,”_ Lucy wrote shamelessly in her notebook, Sam leaning back to narrate. _“Where SHIELD put Curt is pretty old school. They use a lot more personnel than tech.”_

“Isn’t that easier?” Peggy asked.

 _“Tech’s easier to fool,”_ Lucy said. _“Competent people have to be bribed or bullied. Where my bank accounts are being watched by HYDRA it’ll take a little longer, if I have to do it myself. Ourselves,”_ she amended. _“Thank you very much.”_ She looked expectantly at the blanket-covered man.

“Thank you,” Frank said. She could hear the roll of his eyes and smirked.

_“All of this is contingent on you providing information. You’ll write out as much as you remember, I’ll have follow up questions, you will be forthcoming and truthful or you’ll go back to prison.”_

“One of us fought HYDRA before it was cool,” Frank grumbled, ducking his head out from under the blanket but staying low.

Peggy delicately cleared her throat just as Steve coughed pointedly.

“One of us wasn’t taking time travel orders from a HYDRA agent,” Frank amended.

“I hate to interrupt this, but can we talk about the prison break thing?” Steve asked.

_“What did you think we were going to do? That I was going to pass him the secret to evading HYDRA assassins? Hey, have you tried being their boss’s daughter?”_

Sam looked agape at Lucy.

“What?” Frank’s head popped up over the seat.

“Head down,” Lucy said aloud.

“What is happening?” Felicity demanded. Lucy turned and found everyone else looking at her.

“Oh, right. I didn’t tell you,” she said. She’d planned to tell the occupants of the car. She’d imagined it so many times that it felt like a memory, but she’d chickened out every time.

“No,” Sam said with deliberate calm.

 _“Grant said she’s a head, some kind of HYDRA royalty. She called me about Bill, pushed me to get together, or back together, whatever. She reinforced the fiancé story. She assigned Grant to seduce me to bring me into the fold. Is this going to be a problem?”_ She kept her face as blank as possible as Sam read her words aloud, but her stomach and her fingers were clenched tight. Throwing a tantrum and breaking a terrorist out of prison looked a little different when you were a HYDRA princess.

“Not for me,” Steve said immediately.

“You saved my life,” Peggy reminded her.

“I trust you,” Felicity said. “You know that.”

Sam looked at Lucy. “I’m worried that you won’t tell us if you’re not okay,” he said finally. His voice was low but privacy was an illusion in the small space. “But I’ve never doubted your intentions.”

Frank clambered over the back of the seat, picking up the Rangers baseball cap that was on the seat next to Lucy and jamming it on his head. “Wasn’t in the journal. Doesn’t change a thing.”

* * *

When they stopped for gas, it was quiet enough that they got out to stretch their legs. HYDRA probably didn’t want Steve’s existence publicised, and they didn’t have recent pictures of Lucy, but she and Frank were both wearing visible wounds that would draw attention, so they didn’t go into the gas station. Steve pumped the gas, keeping an eye on them as they walked over to the rest stop area, not exactly together, but not very far apart. The other three went inside to pay, acquire snacks, and use the bathroom. With Peggy faking an American accent and wearing her hair straight under a toque, they didn’t draw a second look.

Lucy had just wanted some space to pace, but she noticed the cat lying next to the garbage can. It wasn’t moving, and its head was stuck in a tin can. Her hands covered her mouth instinctively and Frank noticed her reaction. She approached cautiously, putting a hand on the animal’s side with dread. It was warm, and squirmed underneath her, and in her fragile emotional state she could have cried with relief.

“Hang on,” Frank said, handing her his hat. He pulled his hoodie off, using it to scoop up the cat, trapping its claws. It was a good call – it started to fight immediately. “It’s alright,” he said, voice low and soothing. “Shh. It’s okay. No one’s gonna hurt you.” Lucy stroked the cat through the hoodie, and soon it went limp again, too weak to fight. She carefully tugged the tin can off the cat’s head, leading to another short burst of struggle as it blinked blearily at the sudden brightness of even the cloudy winter day. She blocked the direct sun with the hat still in her hand.

“It’s okay,” Frank was still saying. “You’re alright.”

“Car?” Lucy suggested. She was chilly in her heavy sweater. In just a t-shirt he had to be freezing. The others seemed done anyway.

“Aw, do we have a stowaway?” Felicity asked when they got close.

“Another one?” muttered Steve.

The cat hissed and snapped at Felicity’s outstretched hand.

“Okay, fair enough,” Felicity said. “We’ve all had a rough year.” Lucy climbed into the car first and reached for the bundle of cat. Frank passed it into the car and they shared a smile, both remembering the first time they’d done this with Max.

“Let’s get out of here,” Steve urged.

* * *

Lucy’s improving mood took a sharp dive when they got back to the bunker. Coulson had apparently not been clear on the breakout part of the plan either. There were holding cells in the sub-basement of the already underground base, and Frank was marched into one of them. Coulson and Steve were still angry with Lucy. Peggy, who wanted to know what Frank knew, was pointedly making tea for everyone except them and muttering about pigheadedness. Frank was still frosty and insisted that he wouldn’t talk until Curt was out of prison. Clint, their resident expert of random-crap-he’d-picked-up-in-the-circus, including animal care, offered to help Lucy clean up the cat. They still had leftover delousing shampoo and flea medication from Steve’s cat.

“I’m sorry,” Clint had said quietly, speaking aloud. The cat (another female, according to Clint), wasn’t happy with the amount of handling it was getting but didn’t seem to mind the bath itself.

Hands full, she tilted her head quizzically.

“I knew you were Coulson’s daughter, and I kinda figured you’d want to know sooner rather than later.”

She shook her head. “Wasn’t your secret,” she rasped, cupping water and pouring it over the cat’s head.

“I know that you haven’t really seen all the things that make him awesome, and you can totally be mad at him, but he’s honestly the best. If he says he’ll do something, he’ll do it. And even if he doesn’t, if he knows that it needs doing, he’s just there. He’s my favourite not-Maria handler. He always takes care of his people. Everyone in SHIELD knows that stuff, but people think he’s boring and he’s not. He’s funny, he’s just so dry that they don’t notice.” He fished the plug out of the sink, getting a swipe of the cat’s claws for his trouble. Lucy grabbed the towel and scooped her up when the water had drained. She was painfully thin.

“He’s seriously badass,” Clint continued admiringly. “And just – just the best person I know. I got kind of a shit draw, as a kid, and I didn’t think there were people like that. Maria’s great but she’s got her feet on the ground, you know? But Coulson really believes all the idealistic stuff that people say, all the nice stuff. And he’s surprisingly h-” he broke off when Felicity pushed the door open, Kitty in her carrier.

“Ready to introduce them?” she asked.

“Right behind you,” Lucy said.

“Lucy,” Clint said, looking pale under what was left of his pre-bunker tan.

“Not my secret,” she said. The cat squirmed, and she got a better grip and hurried to follow Felicity to the lounge, where an audience had gathered.

“We’re really going to have to figure out names now,” Felicity said. “They can’t both be Kitty.” Steve insisted that Lucy had to name the Lincoln cat, and nothing had felt right to her yet.

She put the new cat down, letting her free of the towel. She hissed at Lucy.

“Good Kitty and Bad Kitty?” Steve suggested.

“Not bad,” Lucy said, reaching out to run a hand down her damp spine. She turned and scowled at Lucy. “Prickly.”

Kitty meowed plaintively from inside the barrier, and Lucy held her breath as the newer cat approached the barrier. They stood nose to nose on either side of the bars for a long moment, and then they both started purring and rubbing up against the gate.

“I think they like each other,” Felicity said. “Should I open it up?”

“Give it another minute,” Clint advised.

Lucy’s brain was stuck on _prickly_. She tapped Felicity’s arm and pointed at her.

“Me?” Felicity said. Lucy nodded, laid her left hand up flat facing herself and pointed at it with her right index and middle fingers, moving them up and down. “Read?” Felicity guessed, and Lucy smiled and nodded again, then began to slowly finger-spell.

“Did I read Tamora Pierce?” Felicity repeated. “Uh, yeah, I think so.”

Lucy started fingerspelling again. _L-A-R-K_

“Lark and Rosethorn?” Felicity predicted. “Aw, yeah. I love that. Nice kitty is Lark,” she told Steve, Peggy and Sam. “The new kitty is Rosethorn.”

Once the cats were cuddled together busily grooming one another, everyone else drifted away one by one. Lucy insisted that, having slept late, she couldn’t yet. Felicity was the last to go, looking worriedly at her, but everyone in the bunker had learned to sleep when they got the opportunity. She got her tablet and sat on the floor near Rosethorn’s food dish but not too close. Despite being clearly underfed, she hadn’t eaten anything they’d offered her. Lucy had gotten a dish of Lark’s food and a dish of tuna, both of which Lark had nibbled on before deciding she was full. That in and of itself was heartening. It had taken some time for the cat to get comfortable enough to leave food in the dish. Lucy did her best to coax Rosethorn to have a little, but she just stared at the dish and then at Lucy with wide, judging eyes.

“Fine,” she told the cat. “You’re right.” It was time to stop stalling. She opened the anonymous throwaway email account that she shared with Foggy. If the email wasn’t sent, none of the intrusive data harvesting programs used by intelligence agencies that HYDRA might have tentacles in would be able to see it. It was their only way of communicating without going through SHIELD. She started typing out a highly sanitized version of events, but even that had her breath coming faster.

She set the tablet aside and slipped off the couch onto the floor, putting her back against the couch and drawing her knees to her chest. Lark curled up against her hip and purred determinedly as Lucy counted her own breaths until they stabilized.

_"Dr Preston?"_

She jumped. She'd forgotten about JARVIS. He was everywhere in the bunker now, in the security protocols and on every electronic device. His voice was coming through the tablet, and while he couldn't exactly see her with the tablet face down on the couch, he certainly knew what was happening. What if he told Sam? Her friend would make sad eyes at her until she talked about her feelings and Lucy would never get them compartmentalised again before the next call out. Or Steve - Steve would bench her. He would tell her that she was too emotional, that she didn't belong in the field, just like-

_"I have some observations about the historiography of presidential power. Would you like to review them?"_

She took a deep breath and groped for the tablet. "That would be great, JARVIS. Thank you." 

Steve found her an hour later, by which time she had moved back onto the couch with Lark curled up on her chest, still purring. Steve fake-yawned and stretched like he had just woken up. "Still awake?" He sat on the opposite end of the couch.

Lucy shrugged and nodded, pulling up an empty word document on the tablet to type in.

_The cat was a really great idea. I don't tell you often enough what a great leader you are._

"I've been meaning to talk to you. To apologise," Steve began.

Lucy cut him off with a careful shake of her head. She gave him a thumbs up.

"You promise we're good?" he asked, looking very young for a moment. She got so sucked into her own issues that she sometimes forgot how much he carried on his shoulders.

She drew an x over her heart. He chuckled.

"You want company?"

She tapped the tablet screen.

 _"Dr Preston and I have been reviewing the history of presidential power,"_ JARVIS supplied.

"Well then I'll leave you to it. Don't let her stay up too late, JARVIS."

_"Good night, Captain Rogers."_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments really make my day. Thanks to everyone for reading! Take care of yourselves this week.
> 
> Coming up:  
> “September 22, 1692.”  
> Lucy didn’t even need a location. “Salem, right?”  
> Felicity looked at her and nodded. “Does that mean what I think it means?”  
> “If you think it means maybe the worst time and place in America for two women to travel alone, you’d be right,” Lucy said.  
> “You don’t think we can wait until the others get back?” Felicity asked.


	19. Where do we draw the line?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heavily based on Timeless 2x04 "The Salem Witch Hunt.

Lucy couldn’t remember why she had thought this was a good idea. It was one thing to struggle through a science or math lesson with Peter, who barely seemed to notice that he was picking it up faster than she was half-remembering it and spun off on tangents that gave her some time to nod politely and quietly catch up. It was another with Amy popping her gum and glaring at Lucy. As friendly as she’d originally been, she’d gone ice-cold as soon as the helicopter showed up. It had been a week since Lucy had gotten Frank out of jail, and Curt had been transported to join him in the basement cells two days after that. Amy had at least stopped leaving every room Lucy entered after that. Frank’s pilot and getaway driver David Lieberman, aka Micro, was a former NSA analyst who had faked his death and found Frank. He’d already been recruited to join SHIELD in return for immunity and protection for his family and was at some other SHIELD base, reunited with them. The only time Amy voluntarily displayed a positive emotion was when she was visiting with Frank and Curt, and even that was guarded when anyone was around. Peter had gotten a couple of small smiles, but mostly when he caught her off-guard. She spent hours at the basketball hoop that was tucked in a corner of the hanger, with Peter rebounding for her and chattering straight through, but she sat down for lessons without more than a token protest. With a technology-limiting bracelet on her for security reasons, it wasn’t like there were many privileges Lucy could take away to compel her cooperation. 

“Do you want, like, some time to prep this?” Amy suggested, sounding bored. As if Lucy wasn’t already up to her eyeballs in work. She woke up at 5:30 because Peggy was an early riser who had agreed to train her, Felicity and now Amy, who would only say that Bill had taken the Mothership by taking her hostage. Then, after a run, a shower and breakfast, she did chores and got ready for the kids’ lessons. They did English, History and Civics before lunch, and Science and Math after, at which time they were assigned reading and chores and then Lucy went to talk to Frank about the journal and HYDRA, usually over food. After supper she sat down to comb through Carol’s bibliography for clues on when HYDRA might be going next and how to stop them until Clint shook her out of it to go to the range to practice shooting.

Carol had a long, robust history of publication. Books, journal articles, papers presented at conferences, her PhD thesis, even papers from school that JARVIS had tracked down. Some overlapped with Lucy’s expertise but no historian knew everything, and she needed historiographical context – what other historians had said about the events and movements – to tell what was mainstream belief and where Carol diverged. Even limiting the scope to American history on the chancy theory that HYDRA would continue to focus there, she was still wildly unprepared to guide everyone through whole swaths of American history. She had notebooks colour-coded by era full of hand-written notes about the little details of everyday life that hadn’t always seemed important before, had gotten Felicity to help her communicate untraceably with old school and work friends, claiming that she was working on a fictional novel about time travel and picking their brains for possible plots, everyday details and linguistic quirks.

"Hey, Lucy?" Felicity called.  _ Saved by the bell _ , she thought. Maybe she could fib when she got back and say they had finished working on trigonometry in her timeline. Why couldn’t all math just be algebra? She was fine with algebra but trig was a disaster, and she broke out into a cold sweat thinking about calculus. Felicity walked into the room, a phone in her hand. Lucy's stomach dropped into her shoes at the sight of her friend's face. 

"What is it?"

"It's Foggy. He wants to talk to you," Felicity said.

"Are you okay?" Lucy demanded, snatching the phone from Felicity's hand. Her voice came out high and panicky.

"Are you kidding me?" her brother replied, sputtering a little.

"Is it Matt?" she asked. A phone call meant going through SHIELD. They hadn't had an unscheduled one in the time she'd been in the bunker, so she assumed that something was terribly wrong.

She heard Foggy take a deep, noisy breath in and out. "Is there anything you want to tell me?" he asked.

"Oh," she said, realising what this was about. She walked out the door without looking at any of the room's other occupants, finding some privacy. "Foggy, I - I don't really know where to start. What do you know?"

"How about we start with, why didn't you tell me?"

"Talking kind of hurt. I got sort of hit in the throat. But I'm fine," she said quickly. "I'm fine now." The pain was gone, though some colourful bruising was still fading.

"Email?" They'd exchanged them since Lucy's kidnapping, their usual keeping in touch. Foggy's were long and chatty, full of things about Matt and his final year of law school. Lucy's were shorter, little things about Peter or Felicity or history books she was reading, mostly.

"I tried. I just - what do you know?"

He didn't answer for a long moment. "How would you feel, if I was keeping things like this from you? Jesus Luce, I knew you were mad at me for leaving you-"

"That isn't-" She couldn't bring herself to finish, and his judgemental silence made it clear that he knew it. "Mad isn't the word I would use. I just miss you. We've always been together." Even before he had followed her to New York they'd kept in close touch. The emails weren't the same as texting back and forth constantly throughout the day, or phone calls, or video chat.

"I have a life, Lucy. I have a boyfriend, and you are so upset about it that you just cut me off from the stuff that matters. How is that fair? How is that okay?"

"It's not. It's not like that, it's just that Frank and I are trying to figure out what was in the journal, and I'm reading all Mom's work, and it's just a lot, okay?"

"Frank? And why are you reading Mom's work?" _Shit_. Lucy usually kept it together better than this, but she was used to being entirely honest with her brother.

"Frank is here. In a cell! He rescued me, when Grant ... Grant said some things, when he had me, about Mom being involved in all this. We haven't been able to vet them."  


She expected an explosion of well-deserved anger, but all she heard was a dial tone. "Foggy?"

The alarm started blaring. She closed her eyes. She had to pull it together and go do her job or people could die. She didn't get to call in heartsick have an off day.

"What happens now?" Amy asked. Lucy turned to see both teenagers. Felicity wasn't with them, no doubt already on the computer hard at work.

“Peter, you can explain the homework,” she said.

“We do a report on whatever they’re going back to,” he told Amy. “So that Lucy knows what happened.” It wasn’t a perfect system. There were ripple effects that she’d accidentally stumbled across in her reading and more she probably hadn’t. It also wasn’t as important now that she had JARVIS working with her, but it was better than nothing and was an assignment that didn’t require prep on her part.

“That’s stupid. They’re going to be there,” Amy said scornfully, the kids falling into step behind her. “Why don’t we do a report on literally anything else?”

Lucy looked back to see Peter shaking his head frantically.

“Don’t make me do the historiography rant,” Lucy said. “Trust me, even I don’t like it.”

“Trust  _ you _ ?” Amy scoffed. Lucy sighed.

“When did they go?” she asked. It still felt wrong rolling off her tongue. Felicity was at the computer already, and Fitz joined them, goggles on top of his head. Jemma followed, stripping off gloves. They were the only ones left in the bunker, the tactical personnel all out on a raid of a HYDRA-controlled base. Even Skye had gone, as the girl was apparently in training as a field agent.

“September 22, 1692.”

Lucy didn’t even need a location. “Salem, right?”

Felicity looked at her and nodded. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“If you think it means maybe the worst time and place in America for two women to travel alone, you’d be right,” Lucy said.

“You don’t think we can wait until the others get back?” Felicity asked.

Lucy leaned in and checked the exact time. “That’s like six hours ahead of the hangings,” she said. There was a lot they didn’t know about time travel rules, but it was ironclad that once someone jumped, it played out in ‘real time’. Lucy and Felicity couldn’t wait for everyone to get back and jump to the same time the Mothership arrived there. As soon as they were boots on the ground, the Lifeboat was chasing. If what they were trying to change centred on the hangings, Lucy had at most six hours until they had changed history. Anyone in the present at that point wouldn’t remember the old timeline to try to change it back, not even JARVIS. Depending on the change, they might not even exist.

“I could go with you!” Peter said brightly.

“No,” chorused Amy along with the adults. She looked disgruntled to have admitted to caring.

“Fifteen was like an adult then,” he protested.

“But it’s not now. Over my dead body,” Lucy said firmly.

“I could,” Fitz volunteered. “ _ I can do an American accent _ .” He said. It was good, although it came with a scowl and a flat affect that was almost comical, his voice low and gravelly. He brightened again to continue in his usual voice. “I learned it making fun of the Ops blokes at the Academy!”

“You’d be fine with your normal accent. But HYDRA has two operatives that we know of who have time travelled before,” Lucy said delicately. She didn’t really want to bring it up, but the limited training she had didn’t qualify her to go up against Bill in a fight, and she had no idea what training Grant had, but she guessed it had been more than her even before he’d spent years living in Indian Territory.

Felicity, her hair braided in a crown around her head, went a little paler.

“I’ll take Frank and we can give JARVIS a timeline. If we don’t come back, he can return and hopefully fetch help.”

“I don’t like you going alone,” Felicity said. “And what if history changes before JARVIS comes back?”

“The options aren’t great,” Lucy allowed. “But I need someone who can go up against Bill.”

“Frank worked with Bill for how long? He didn’t realise when Bill shot Rhodes or Steve or kidnapped me that he was a bad guy? Look, I get that you believe him, but do you really trust him to take Bill down?”

Lucy blinked, without words. The last time they had talked about Frank, they’d been of a like mind. Now she found out that Felicity didn’t trust him even a little, and Lucy had sprung him from prison and put him in her home. Felicity had helped her and supported her, and Lucy-

“You don’t know anything about Frank, so shut your goddamn mouth,” Amy snapped.

“Amy,” Lucy said.

“What are you gonna do, throw me in a cell? The company’s better down there anyway,” Amy said, and stormed off toward the bedrooms.

Lucy looked at Felicity, not sure what to say.

“We’re burning time here,” Felicity said. “Let’s just go talk to him. You’re right, we don’t have great options.”

“Should I go after Amy?” Peter asked.

“Looking after her isn’t your job, Peter, it’s mine. I’ll give her some time to cool down and talk to her when I get back, okay?” Lucy waited for him to nod before she headed downstairs with Felicity.

“I’ll fetch the Puritan costumes,” Fitz said.

“I’ll pack you a lunch,” Simmons said.

* * *

“The Mothership is in September 22, 1692 Salem, Massachusetts.”

“How long do we have before the women die?” Frank asked. Lucy blinked in surprise. “I know some about Salem.”

“Burned a few witches in your day?” Felicity asked. She was leaning against the wall, Peter beside her. Lucy was standing in front of the invisible forcefield that kept the prisoners locked in, arms folded, between Frank and Felicity.

Frank hesitated, turning away from the barrier.

“Is this in the journal?” Lucy demanded, anger sparking under her skin. Anger came so easily these days.

“No, it was – Lisa was having a macabre phase, okay?” Frank barely glanced at Lucy before fixing his gaze on Felicity. He approached the barrier and crossed his arms over his chest. “Witches weren’t burned in Salem, they were hanged,” he said quietly. “Of the accused, only those who refused to confess were executed. And it all came to a head on the 22 nd of September, when the final victims were all hanged from the same tree, one by one. How long?”

“Hours,” Lucy said.

“And we’re twenty minutes behind already,” Frank said. “What are you waiting for?”

“If you have Bill in your sights, what are you going to do?” Lucy asked.

“Pull the trigger,” he said promptly, finally looking her in the eye.

She turned to look at Felicity. “I know he can be a pain in the neck, but I think it’s better than the alternative.” She gestured to her own neck, still visibly bruised although the pain was almost gone. She didn’t really want to release him from the cell over Felicity’s objection.

Peter groaned, facepalming as he always did when her jokes were too corny. “You’re so lame,” he mumbled.

Felicity was torn between amusement and horror. “Fine,” she agreed. “But he doesn’t get a gun. I’ve got a thing against being shot in the back.” She pushed off the wall and strode off without waiting, Peter tailing her.

“Am I coming, too?” Curt asked.

“I can’t let both of you out at once, and a white man is going to be safer and have more access,” Lucy said, keying in the code that she wasn’t supposed to know. She’d learned them after Felicity had suggested she might be put down there because of Carol. Imprisonment was kind of a Thing for her and she didn’t see that getting better any time soon. She dropped the forcefield on Frank’s cell.

“I don’t need a gun to kill Smoak,” Frank said quietly. “When this is over, you need to tell her she shouldn’t let someone like me anywhere near her, if that’s how she feels.”

Lucy sighed. “I think she knows that,” she said. She didn’t know how to articulate that exercising control over little things had gotten more important since she’d been kidnapped. Felicity had offered to talk about it since her throat had improved, but Lucy had brushed her off, feeling a little guilty as she’d done it. She felt worse now – maybe she would have known how Felicity was feeling if she’d taken her up on the offer. “Anyway, anyone could take a gun away from you and pull the trigger. Hand to hand combat training doesn’t really exist. You’re probably more dangerous without the gun in play.”

“You’re betting Bill’s playing by the same rules,” he pointed out.

“Costumes are this way.” How did she tell someone that she’d rather they all die than give a semiautomatic to the Puritans?

“Be careful, dumbass,” Curt called.

“And not anyone could take a gun away from me,” Frank added, sounding insulted.

* * *

“You can just drop us off,” Lucy told Felicity.

“What if history changes and you’re stuck in the past, no one who remembers you? If JARVIS and I are back in the present, we’d get rewritten like everyone else.”

“I chose to bring Frank. If you’re not comfortable-”

“We’re a team, Lucy. If you’re going, I’m going. I don’t trust him. But I trust you, and that’s enough, okay?”

“Can I give you a hug?” Lucy asked Felicity.

“Yeah, of course,” Felicity said.

“Jemma, I’ll be fine!” Fitz insisted loudly. The biochemist was wringing her hands, clearly nervous. He shouldered his rucksack. Even with Frank along for the ride, he had insisted on coming. 

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated, more gently. She threw her arms around him.

“Shouldn’t your clothes be black?” Amy asked. She had returned from her sulk and was frowning at them. Lucy looked down at her red dress. Frank’s doublet was also red, Fitz’s tan, and Felicity’s dress olive green. The fashions were a little out of date, especially Lucy’s, but there was nothing to be done about it. They could only take so many costumes when they had relocated, and they’d originally planned on only one woman being in the field.

“The past was a lot more colourful than people think. Black dye could be expensive.”

“Hmmph,” Amy said. She folded her arms. “If you get Frank killed, I’ll hate you forever.”

“Noted.” Lucy nodded.

“Amy,” Frank said sternly.

“What? Tony Stark got killed.”

“Hey!”

“If I promise that I understand that you hate me, can we just shelve it until tomorrow?" Lucy requested.

"Yeah, okay," Amy said, shifting from one foot to the other.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Frank said.

“We need to move,” Lucy replied.

* * *

“There it is, Procter’s Ledge,” Lucy said as they walked through the woods. That meant they were close. Her bruises were hidden, lest they be mistaken for marks of a previous hanging attempt. Luckily covering skin wasn’t suspicious in Puritan fashion. “A few hours from now, innocent people will be hanged in that very spot.”

“Poor women,” Fitz said. 

“Some men, too. The ones that spoke up. Watch what you say, and who you say it to,” Frank instructed.

“ _ Into our town the Hangman came, smelling of gold and blood and flame, _ ” Lucy murmured.

“What’s that?  _ Hamilton _ ?” Felicity asked.

“No,” Frank said.

Lucy shook her head to clear it. The woods were misty and quiet. Even the animals seemed hushed. “It’s a poem,” she said dismissively.

“I figured Salem would be creepy,” Fitz said, looking at the trees suspiciously. “But I thought there would be more people.”

“These are dangerous times. The noisier the accusations got, the more people stayed indoors. And the woods, where the made up rituals were said to take place, were the last place anyone wanted to be spotted.”

“Rituals?”

“Made up,” Felicity repeated Lucy’s words soothingly.

“In the woods. Where we are,” Fitz said. “And what is that?” he pointed at a hooded and cloaked figure walking toward them.

Lucy walked toward her.

“No. No. Rule number one, don’t go toward the demonic entity!” Fitz hissed.

“Hello there,” Lucy called. “Who are you?”

“My name is Abaiah. Who asks?” She pushed back her hood and revealed the face of a woman about Lucy’s age. At least she thought so. It could be hard to guess ages when time travelling. The people they encountered didn’t have much in the way of health care, skinor dental care, or reliable nutrition.

“I’m Isaiah,” said Frank. “This is my brother Daniel. And our wives.”

“I’m Lucy, and this is Felicity,” Lucy added, realising that Frank hadn’t had a woman on his team. He probably hadn’t thought about feminine names, but ‘Lucy’ had been used since the 12 th century, and ‘Felicity’, while not the virtue name that the Puritans would look the most kindly on, would be no more remarkable than their appearances or (lack of) smell.

“Here to be entertained by this afternoon’s hangings, I imagine.” She pinned a paper to the tree with a wicked-looking dagger, mouth set in disapproval. She looked them over. “You’re not from around here.”

“ _ Murder in Salem. Let the judges be judged _ ,” Lucy read. “Looks like we agree these trials are unfair.” 

“These trials are more than unfair. They are murderous. Innocent women are dying!” The woman snapped.

“That’s why we’re here,” Frank interjected, shooting Lucy a look. She'd gone too far in keeping the emotions of her personal life under control and come across as detached.

“ _ Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause _ ,” Felicity said softly.

“Isaiah 1:17,” Abaiah said.

“Yes,” Lucy agreed, grateful that Felicity had paid more attention to the Torah than Lucy had to the Bible. “We believe that the congregants here have, in their great zeal to do God’s will, been led astray.”

Abaiah relaxed. “My apologies. It appears we are in agreement, and I am not accustomed to that of late.”

“You realise how dangerous it is to speak out on a day like today? Your husband, your children - don’t they need you?” she asked gently. A woman Lucy’s age would be expected to have both. The poem continued to cycle ominously in her head.  _ Then one cried, “Murderer!” One cried, “Shame!” _

“I couldn’t live with myself if I stayed quiet,” Abaiah said, and there was nothing reckless or unprepared in her eyes. “My sister has had a hand in this persecution. It is my duty to speak out for what is just. How can I raise my children to be something I am not? I must say something, which is what I will soon do at Ingersoll’s Tavern.”

“Tavern?” Fitz repeated.

“Beer is proof that God wants us to be happy,” Abaiah said.  Frank snorted.

They seated themselves in the tavern, though not with Abaiah. “I do not wish my actions to be your first impression,” she had said, eyeing them in a way that made Lucy worry that she had missed something in their costuming.

A man cried for silence, and ordered the prisoners brought in.

“That’s John Hathorne, Justice of the Peace overseeing the trials,” Lucy guessed.

“Last week, a petition was submitted to Governor Phips, begging for the guilty verdict to be overturned, and the accused to be released. Well I have his reply right here, just in the nick of time.” Lucy knew what it said, but the man was playing to the crowd like some kind of proto-Ryan Seacrest. He was enjoying this, she realised, her gut twisting at the thought. “The nine accused witches-”

“Isn’t it supposed to be eight?” Frank whispered in her ear. Lucy’s heart sank and she covered her face with her hands.

“-will be executed, as planned!” Hathorne announced to cheers.

“There’s only eight there. Who is it?” Frank asked.

“Stop! I call for a new trial!” Abby said.

“Her sister is one of the accusers," she whispered, looking at Frank. "What do you bet that's Abaiah _Franklin_ ,” Lucy whispered.

“On what grounds?” Hathorne was affronted

"Shit," Frank groaned.

"What?" Felicity demanded.

“On the grounds that there is no such thing as a witch,” Abaiah continued.

“She’s Benjamin Franklin’s mother,” Lucy said. Felicity’s face looked as grim as Lucy felt.

Abaiah disputed the charges, defending the women as eccentric but harmless scapegoats. It was exactly the kind of thing that would be widely understood in the present, exactly the kind of thing that a time traveller might encourage an already outraged woman from a progressive church in Boston to say. Some of the crowd looked disgusted, or pitying, but a few were nodding, or looking around nervously to see who else was finding it convincing.

Hathorne ignored her, announcing her own accusation. “Who is Abaiah Franklin?” he concluded.  _ “Do you hold?” said he / With him that was meant for the gallows-tree?” _

Abaiah was pale but determined as she identified herself. There were some jeers. No one objected.  _ We gave him way, and no one spoke / Out of fear of his hangman’s cloak. _

“How can you not see it?” Abaiah shouted as they dragged her away. “If we do not all hang together we will all hang separately. Cowards!” Despite everything, Lucy smiled slightly. On signing the Declaration of Independence, Ben would steal his mother’s line and make it famous. But only if they saved his mother. He wouldn't be born for another fourteen years.

“So HYDRA is trying to kill Ben Franklin? Why would they do that?” Fitz asked.

“I would have gone after Thomas Paine. I had a plan for that, maybe – maybe she anticipated that.” She was assuming that her mother, in her dual role as historian and HYDRA head, was planning these. That she might be using her familiarity with Lucy against the Lifeboat team made her sick to her stomach. “But Ben Franklin – he challenged authority. He helped normalise that. And he was one of the few Founding Fathers who was a self made man. He started as an artisan, with very little formal education. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, to a lesser extent Adams – they were born wealthy and elite. Same with most of the lesser-known cosigners of the Declaration of Independence. If you want the Revolution to happen, but to keep political power even more concentrated in the hands of elites, killing Ben Franklin is a step in that direction.”

“So what do we do?” Fitz asked.

“Discredit the accusation?” Lucy suggested. “Or get them to retract it, if HYDRA got a local to do it.”

“How do we figure out who it is?” Felicity asked.

“Bathsheba,” Lucy said. “We start there.”

“Who?”

“Abaiah Franklin’s sister was one of the most ‘active’ accusers,” Frank supplied. “What if that doesn’t work?”

“Break her out, I guess. Benefit of olden times – you travel ten miles and you’ve got a brand new start.”

“Okay. You two find Bathsheba, we’ll case the jail?” Felicity suggested. “I know it’s kind of your thing.” She smiled at Lucy. “But you’re better at talking to people.”

“That sounds fine,” Lucy agreed.

“Are you sure?” Felicity pressed, eyes flicking to Frank.

“I’m sure,” Lucy said. “Just be careful, yes? And we’ll meet back here?”

They both nodded.

“Discrediting Bathsheba might help Abaiah, but what about the other women?” Frank asked. They’d been directed to a house on the outskirts of town.

“We protect the timeline,” Lucy said.

“They keep trying to change history in their favour, why can’t we change it in ours?” Frank demanded. “You want these women to hang?”

“Of course not! But we don’t know what will happen, who it will wipe out of the timeline. Losing Foggy would have wrecked me-”

“No one else will remember. Foggy’s safe, Smoak and the new kid have single mothers, and my family’s dead already.”

“What if it’s not a law student or a cocktail waitress? Setting aside what you were willing to do about your personal grief, what if it’s JFK? What if it’s Fritz Haber?”

“The guy who invented chemical warfare?” He was taken aback enough to be more confused than angry.

“And a process for making nitrate fertilizer that enables the world to feed  _ billions _ more people than it otherwise could.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in Great Man theory.”

“I think the effect of individuals is overstated, not nonexistent. Do you have any idea how close the world came to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Changing out any of the players could have catastrophic effects. And Johnson rammed the Civil Rights Act through Congress through backroom dealings and arrogance and his giant swinging dick but also with JFK’s death. What if Lee Harvey Oswald is never born? Sure, one man lives, but what are the knock-on effects? How much longer does it take? You can’t tell me that the future is better. You can’t tell me if there will be anything left of the team or the base or New York.”

“This isn’t you!” Frank was nearly shouting. Luckily, they were out of town with no one around.

“I’m not the woman who wrote the journal, because I still have something to lose!” Lucy wanted to scream with frustration. “The world we have is unfair and dangerous and there are terrible people with more power than they should have, but it is also full of hope and love and strength so no, I don’t want to roll the dice on a nuclear wasteland!”

He stared at her like he was seeing her for the very first time, and maybe he was. “Maybe I was wrong. If you aren’t going to work with me, then you’re expendable.”

“Well I’m sorry that you put yourself out to rescue me. Let’s just get this done, and I'll tell Coulson you cooperated,” Lucy said icily.

“Fine,” he agreed.

* * *

“Boston is 15 miles away. Must have taken you two all day. You’re welcome to stay for dinner. We’re having venison.” Joseph Pope smiled, welcoming them to sit.

“Thank you, but no,” Lucy said. Frank had reverted to communicating in furrowed eyebrows and grunts. 1692 wasn’t an ideal time to be the only speaking member of a couple, but Lucy was determined to make it work.

“You’re a hunter?” Frank asked. Lucy bit back the urge to say something snarky about him finally speaking, but she refrained..

“I haven’t touched a gun in years. I’m a God-fearing man,” Joseph demurred. Lucy realised what Frank was getting at. He hadn’t said where they got the venison. Her eyes scanned the room.

“I was hoping to speak to your wife,” Lucy confessed, when the silence dragged too long. “Bathsheba, wasn’t it?”

“Strong name,” Frank said, laughter audible in his voice.

“Strong woman,” said her husband, unperturbed.

“You journeyed from Boston?” asked the woman herself, entering the room. “Salem had had all sorts of visitors. These trials have touched us all. In fact, Joseph told me just today, my own sister had been convicted of taking up the Dark Arts and will soon be punished. A blessing, I suppose. If not for Abaiah, then for our village to be freed of such evil.” The speech seemed rehearsed to Lucy.

“I know that you’ve been making up lies. Martha Cory was your neighbour, and you were in dispute over a property line. That’s why you accused her, isn’t it? You lied! You may have everyone else in Salem fooled, but you don’t fool me.”

“What makes you think you can know such things?” Bathsheba demanded.

Well done, Lucy. Reveal inappropriate knowledge to an active accuser of witches. How very River Tam. But in for a penny, in for a pound.

“Why did you do it? People came to you, didn’t they? Was it a threat, or did you sell out your own sister for money?” Lucy demanded. She felt Frank just behind her, could see the fearful glances he was getting over her shoulder from the couple.

“How dare you?” Bathsheba deflected.

“Who wanted you to accuse her?” Lucy lost her temper and raised her voice.

“I demand that you leave at once!” Joseph said, puffing himself up as tall as he could. He was still a good foot shorter than Frank, barely Lucy’s size. “We will not be spoken to in such a manner in our own home!”

“She will speak how she speaks,” Frank growled. Lucy turned away from the Puritans and gave him a small nod.

He smiled, the look almost feral, and threw Joseph into a chair several feet away.

“Stop!” Bathsheba said immediately. “You’re right, I have accused women. But I did not accuse my sister. I would never do such a thing.”

Lucy believed her. The rehearsed speech also made sense if she was trying to avoid being brought down with Abaiah. She looked at Frank, who nodded his agreement. Back to square one.

“Apparently Puritans can really build a jail. Now if I had some explosives ... oh! Or a small monkey-” Fitz said.

“Where, exactly, are we supposed to find a monkey?” Frank growled.

“I’m just saying, for next time,” Fitz said, wide-eyed in confusion over their mood. “He could sneak in and use his adorable little hands to-”

“The geek votes for a monkey,” Frank said. “I vote bloodbath but if I can’t find a damn musket-” he broke off.

“I thought you said that muskets are basically useless, unless it’s a big crowd,” Felicity said.

“Yes,” Lucy agreed.

“And the best soldiers can only fire about three times a minute.”

“Once rifling is invented they’re more accurate, but even slower,” Lucy said.

“So wouldn’t Frank be more effective just-” she waved her hands in an approximation of fighting that made Frank drop his head into his hands with a groan of despair.

“So long as he could bottleneck them, he’d be more effective but less intimidating,” Lucy said, taking a guess at his motive. “Guns are scary. These people understand the threat of one. They look at Frank and see a big guy but they don’t see a weapon that can snap their neck. If he went in unarmed it really would be a bloodbath. I wasn’t really planning on taking on the whole town.”

Frank dropped his hands and looked at her with surprise.

“What I don’t understand is what Abaiah is doing here. She should be in Boston. There wasn’t enough time between when the Mothership landed and we arrived to get her here by contemporary means.”

“What if they jumped here, then back further?” Fitz asked. 

“We wouldn’t know that?” Lucy asked. 

He and Felicity started to explain, then speculate on how they might correct such a problem.

Frank shot her a look that said  _ geeks, am I right? _

“If that’s what happened, why are we here?” Lucy asked him, letting the sci-tech team continue their own debate. “Why aren’t we chasing the Watergate tapes, or the Space Race, or Charles Lindbergh? Drop us in any time and place, we’re going to find an event or an infrastructure or a person who will grow up to be famous, or the ancestor of someone famous. Why are we here, where we could possibly interfere? Why not send us on a wild goose chase?”

He shook his head, equally stumped.

“If not a gun, maybe a knife?” she suggested. His problem seemed more solvable than hers. He got up to search the tavern, still looking thoughtful.

A dozen men came pouring into the tavern. Half surrounded Lucy, Fitz and Felicity at the table and the other half surrounded Frank. Bathsheba or Joseph must have talked. “Stay right there,” ordered Hathorne. “We need a word with you and your Friends.”

Frank looked at Lucy. She pushed to her feet. “Murder in Salem,” she said. “Let the judges be judged!” He burst into motion, knocking one of the two musket-bearers in range of him into the other. They’d made the classic mistake of the undertrained – getting too close to the target. They didn’t know how to fight, or how to work cohesively. They were tripping over tables, chairs and themselves. Frank was out the door before the men near Lucy could even decide whether to risk pulling the trigger.

She didn’t have time to evaluate Fitz and Felicity’s reactions, because another voice rang out, a familiar one.

“That’s Lucy, yes. She’s a witch.”

So that was why they were in Salem. Lucy turned and looked directly into the eyes of her mother. 


	20. My mother was a genius

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> “What I don’t understand is what Abaiah Franklin is doing here. She should be in Boston. There wasn’t enough time between when the Mothership landed and we arrived to get her here by contemporary means.”  
> “What if they jumped here, then back further?” Fitz asked.  
> “If that’s what happened, why are we here?”  
> ...  
> “That’s Lucy, yes. She’s a witch.”  
> So that was why they were in Salem. Lucy turned and looked directly into the eyes of her mother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops I forgot to post this yesterday! Still based heavily on Timeless 2x04 with in-universe quotes from The Princess Bride, Firefly, and "The Hangman" by Maurice Ogden.

Lucy paced the cell like a caged tiger, though between the size and the ten other women in it there wasn’t a lot of room to pace. Her hands were clenched in fists, fingernails making half-moon divots in the flesh of her palms, but it wasn’t working. Her breath was getting short and shallow. She couldn’t take this. She couldn’t-

“What was that poem?” Felicity asked, stepping in front of her.

“What?” Lucy asked. She forced herself to pull her focus into the here-and-now.

Felicity put her hands on Lucy’s shoulders. “Earlier, you mentioned a poem. Recite it. I mean, unless you can’t.”

“I know what you’re doing,” Lucy said.

“So come on. Talk to me,” Felicity said, pulling her into a corner. She looked a little desperate too, and Lucy was reminded that she wasn’t the only one staring death in the face. Fitz was right outside the cell, chained up on a bench with whatever trauma he might be carrying. Felicity was right in front of her, had been kidnapped and refused to stop working.

“It’s called “The Hangman,” Lucy said quietly.

_Into our town the Hangman came.  
 _Smelling of gold and blood and flame_  
 _And he paced our bricks with a diffident air_  
 _And built his frame on the courthouse square_ _

_The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,_   
_Only as wide as the door was wide;_   
_A frame as tall, or little more,_   
_Than the capping sill of the courthouse door_

_And we wondered, whenever we had the time,_   
_Who the criminal, what the crime_   
_That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist_   
_Of knotted hemp in his busy fist._

_And innocent though we were, with dread,_  
_We passed those eyes of buckshot lead:_  
_Till one cried: “Hangman, who is he_  
_For whom you raise the gallows-tree?”_   
  
_Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,_  
_And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:  
“He who serves me best,” said he, _  
_“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree,”_   
  
_And he stepped down, and laid his hand_  
_On a man who came from another land._  
_And we breathed again, for another’s grief_  
_At the Hangman’s hand was our relief_   
  
_And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn_  
_By tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone._  
_So we gave him way, and no one spoke._  
_Out of respect for his Hangman’s cloak._   
  
_The next day’s sun looked mildly down_  
_On roof and street in our quiet town_  
_And stark and black in the morning air,_  
_The gallows-tree on the courthouse square._   
  
_And the Hangman stood at his usual stand_  
_With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;_  
_With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike_  
_And his air so knowing and business like._   
  
_And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done_  
_Yesterday, with the alien one?_  
_Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,_  
_“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”_   
  
_He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:_  
_“Did you think I’d gone to all this fuss_  
_To hang one man? That’s a thing I do_  
_To stretch a rope when the rope is new.”_   
  
_Then one cried “Murder!” One cried “Shame!”_  
_And into our midst the Hangman came_  
_To that man’s place. “Do you hold,” said he_  
_“With him that was meant for the gallows-tree?”_   
  
_And he laid his hand on that one’s arm_  
_And we shrank back in quick alarm_  
_And we gave him way, and no one spoke_  
_Out of fear of his Hangman’s cloak._   
  
_That night we saw with dread surprise_  
_The Hangman’s scaffold had grown in size._  
_Fed by the blood beneath the chute_  
_The gallows-tree had taken root;_   
  
_Now as wide, or a little more,_  
_Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,_  
_As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,_  
_Halfway up on the courthouse wall._   
  
_The third he took – we had all heard tell_  
_Was an usurer and infidel, and_  
_“What?” said the Hangman “have you to do_  
_With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?”_   
  
_And we cried out, “Is this one he_  
_Who has served you well and faithfully?”_  
_The Hangman smiled: “It’s a clever scheme_  
_To try the strength of the gallows-beam.”_   
  
_The fourth man’s dark, accusing song_  
_Had scratched our comfort hard and long;_  
_And “What concern,” he gave us back,_  
_“Have you for the doomed – the doomed and black?”_   
  
_The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,_  
_Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?”_  
_“It’s a trick,” he said, “that we hangmen know_  
_For easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”_   
  
_And so we ceased, and asked no more,_  
_As the Hangman tallied his bloody score:_  
_And sun by sun, and night by night,_  
_The gallows grew to monstrous height._   
  
_The wings of the scaffold opened wide_  
_Till they covered the square from side to side:_  
_And the monster cross-beam, looking down_  
_Cast its shadow across the town._   
  
_Then through the town the Hangman came_  
_And called in the empty streets my name-_  
_And I looked at the gallows soaring tall_  
_And thought, “There is no one left at all_   
  
_For hanging.” And so he calls to me_  
_To help pull down the gallows tree._  
_And I went out with right good hope_  
_To the Hangman’s tree and the Hangman’s rope._   
  
_He smiled at me as I came down_  
_To the courthouse square through the silent town._  
_And supple and stretched in his busy hand_  
_Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand._   
  
_And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap_  
_And it sprang down with a ready snap_  
_And then with a smile of awful command_  
_He laid his hand upon my hand._   
  
_“You tricked me, Hangman,” I shouted then._  
_“That your scaffold was built for other men._  
_And I no henchman of yours,” I cried,_  
_“You lied to me, Hangman, foully lied!”_   
  
_Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye:_  
_“Lied to you? Tricked you?” he said, “Not I_  
_For I answered straight and I told you true:_  
_The scaffold was raised for none but you._   
  
_“For who has served me more faithfully_  
_Than you with your coward’s hope?” Said he,_  
_“And where are the others that might have stood_  
_Side by your side in the common good?”_   
  
_“Dead,” I whispered; and amiably,_  
_“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me;_  
_“First the alien, then the Jew …_  
_I did no more than you let me do.”_   
  
_Beneath the beam that blocked the sky,_  
_None had stood so alone as I_  
_And the Hangman strapped me, and no voice there_  
_Cried “Stay!” for me in the empty square._   


Lucy finished the poem in the same soft voice she had begun it in, enough that none of the miserable women around them had made an effort to hear. She’d always like narrative poems, always liked structured rhyme and metre, and it had grounded her enough that her breathing was steady and her mind felt like her own. She looked Felicity in the eye and the other woman smiled as though to welcome her back.

“Sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Felicity said firmly, squeezing her hand. “Now how are we going to get out of this?”

Lucy wasn’t sure they would, but she looked around with a calmer mind than she’d had before, taking in the details – the thick iron bars of the door, the lock she hadn’t a hope of picking, the window too small to fit any of them through, the nine other women awaiting their fate.

Abaiah had been looking at her and crossed the cell after they made eye contact.

“I’m sorry we’re meeting again under such circumstances,” she said.

“I’m sorry we didn’t speak up, when they took you,” Lucy replied. “We thought that we might be able to help from the outside, but you can see how that went. It wasn’t your sister, who accused you,” she added. She didn’t know if it had occurred to Abaiah but the other woman was just as aware of her sister’s testimony and hysterical blindness during one of the trials.

“When I came here I knew that being accused was a possibility, but that didn’t make it any less painful. It is good to know that Bathsheba, misguided as she is, did not think that of me. That’s the worst part. Dying is one thing. Dying in disgrace? The things they said we did are not true. Look at Alice Parker. They said that she stuck pins in a puppet and killed a man.” Abaiah nodded to a woman near them.

“It was my childhood doll,” Alice said. “I just – like dolls,” she shrugged apologetically.

“And Martha Cory? Bathsheba said she snuck into the woods to sign the devil’s book.”

“It’s a lie. I am a Gospel woman.”

“You don’t have to defend yourself with us,” Felicity said. She shook her head. “We’re not from around here, but some things are the same everywhere. You’re not like other woman, and that makes them uncomfortable. So they mock you and they tell you you’re wrong.”

“They blame you for their lust and insecurity,” Lucy added.

“You’re intelligent and brave,” Felicity said, looking at Abaiah. “And that makes them feel small and instead of being better, they tear you down.”

“They call you a witch,” Abaiah agreed.

“We know that none of that is true. So you talk to birds, so you like dolls, so you refuse to confess to being something that you’re not. That’s brave. And we’re proud to count ourselves among you,” Felicity said.

Lucy saw Alice reach out to the older woman next to her and take her hand. All the woman seemed to sit a little straighter after Felicity’s words.

“Lucy, are you okay?”

It was her mother, hooded and cloaked, peering through the bars. Lucy pushed herself to her feet and crossed to the door.

“How could you do this?” she demanded. She looked exactly as Lucy remembered her - short and slim like Lucy, with pale blonde hair that would go to silver gracefully, if she ever let it. Never a hair or a button out of place. A mouth set in a permanent line of cool disappointment, and hard eyes. 

“You left me no choice. I have responsibilities,” Carol said. “You don’t understand. There are people who would kill me for my position if they thought I was soft.”

“I’m not talking about me, I’m not even talking about pimping me out-”

“Lucy!” Carol gasped.

“-to make an alliance, like I’m some Hapsburg broodmare.”

“Don’t be so vulgar!” Carol hissed. “John Garrett is first generation and crass despite his effectiveness, but Grant came from good stock. He’s a good match for you.”

“Do you hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Lucy had to stop herself from shouting. “That’s not the point. You want to wipe Benjamin Franklin from history?”

“It’s a necessary sacrifice for a better future,” Carol said. “I’m begging you, Lucy. We can go home together.”

Lucy took a step back. “The company’s better on this side of the bars. I’d rather die with these women than live with you,” she said honestly.

“Death is exactly what will happen if you stay on this path,” Carol said. “Or hasn’t your Lieutenant Castle told you that part?”

Lucy bit back the curiosity. She didn’t want to give Carol the satisfaction, but her surprise must have shown. Carol passed a page torn out of the journal, or something its size and approximate appearance, through the bars.

“Get yourself out of this. I’ll find you and take you to the Mothership.”

“Is that a threat?” Lucy asked coolly, resisting the urge to look at the page. Carol left without a backward glance.

* * *

“Make way for the agents of hell,” ordered Hathorne. Dark had fallen, and the crowd had gathered with torches for light. _All that’s missing are the pitchforks_ , she thought.

“Do you think JARVIS will take Frank home?” Felicity asked.

Lucy shrugged. “Get behind me,” she ordered. She didn’t know if he was coming back or not, but she was going to buy him as much time as she could. One of Hathorne’s men came for Abaiah, and Lucy stepped in front of her. “Take me first,” she insisted. 

“She goes first,” he said, pointing over Lucy’s shoulder at Abaiah. “You last.”

“Lucy, it’s fine,” Abaiah said. It wasn’t fine, it was Carol. Her plan was for Lucy to watch all these people - Abaiah, the other innocent Puritans, and her friends - die, and then either die herself or more probably, get kidnapped and brainwashed.

Lucy kneed the man in the groin and then clocked him on the side of his face with her elbow. She hit the next Puritan who came after her with the heel of her palm, driving her tied hands up at his nose. He reared back in shock.

Another had gotten behind her and grabbed her in a bear hug. She dropped toward the ground, wriggling out from his arms, but she was surrounded by that point, too many hands grabbing her for her to successfully fight them off. It was chaos, Felicity, Fitz and Abaiah having gotten involved, and sorting it out ate up precious moments for a rescue to arrive.

They retied her hands behind her back, taking up more time, and then walked her up the steps of the gallows without any more objections about the order they were supposed to die in. Lucy could taste blood, though she couldn’t even remember getting hit.

She could hear Felicity’s voice, hear the fear and worry, but she couldn’t focus on the words. 

“The Colony of Massachusetts Bay has found you guilty of witchcraft,” said Hathorne, playing to the crowd again.

“I’m not a witch, I’m your wife,” Lucy said, because she was completely out of fucks to give. There was a gasp from the crowd, and Hathorne stammered out a refutation, but all Lucy cared about was the startled, slightly hysterical bark of Felicity’s laughter from the crowd of the accused.

“Did she really just-?” asked Fitz. Lucy didn’t hear Felicity’s answer. Her ears started to ring when Hathorne put the noose around her neck. She hoped that the drop was enough to break her neck and give her a swifter death than strangulation.. If that information had been in the historical record, she hadn’t noticed.

She hoped that Frank wasn’t watching.

A shot rang out, the once-familiar sound of an M40’s 7.62 NATO round distinct from anything the Puritans had even through the ringing in Lucy’s ears.

“Let her go,” called Frank, loud enough to cut through the ringing and the jeering of the crowd. Lucy spun as much as she could to look for the source of the voice. Frank was standing on a hill and had a gun. It definitely wasn’t an M40, and her mind spun through the possibilities. Had HYDRA tried to kill her and missed? Or Hathorne? Had they been stalling? Had Frank cut a deal for their cooperation?

“She is a witch!” Hathorne protested.

“Yeah, but she’s his witch. So cut her the hell down,” Felicity said, taking a couple of steps forward from the group of witches.

Hathorne grabbed a fistful of the back of Lucy’s dress, preparing to shove her off the Ledge.

Something slower and larger than a bullet whistled through the air above her and suddenly the noose was attached to only a couple of feet of rope, which was dangling off of Lucy’s neck. She kicked backward at Hathorne’s knee, toppling him off the platform with a yelp.

Another gunshot rang out, making the crowd scream, duck and worry about dispersing instead of trying to recapture Lucy. Still, she wasn’t sure where to go. A few of the judge’s men were more diligent than the onlookers, and Lucy ducked under the wild grab of one. She knew she was on borrowed time. Her hands were literally tied behind her back and she didn’t have much room to maneuver. Suddenly Frank was _there_ , a blur of black tac gear against the torchlit night, using the gun as a club to clear the space. He turned to Lucy and she saw the torchlight glint off of something – the dagger Abby had used to pin her missive to the tree. He’d understood her and found it. She turned her back so he could cut her free, then he pressed it into her hand hilt-first.

Another M40 shot cracked through the air, distinctly different from the noise of a musket. “Bill,” Frank said grimly. He looked around, trying to figure out where his former friend might have been hiding. “Get the others c;ear. I’ll handle him.”

Lucy bolted through the chaos and the smoke. Someone had dropped a torch, she realised, or several someones – there was a fire growing. She pushed Abaiah to the ground, cutting her free and passing off the dagger to Felicity, shielding Abaiah’s body from the sniper with her own as best she could.

“Stay down,” she told the girl. Alice Parker was on the ground, too, shot through the head. It was messier than it ever was in the movies, blood and gore spattered across the ground and on the clothes of nearby women. She’d been in the way, maybe, or Bill was trying to get the witches to panic and scatter to get a clear shot at Abaiah. Maybe he had even mistook Alice for his target in the low visibility. Another M40 shot rang out, but it didn’t hit anyone near her. Had Frank interfered? Had he been hit?

“We need to get them out of here,” Lucy said, suppressing the urge to cough. The smoke was growing thicker. That was to their advantage, if the sniper was still operating.

“All of them?” Felicity asked.

“We can sure as hell try,” Lucy replied.

“I like this Lucy,” Felicity said. “She’s got kind of a Sarah Connor vibe.”

“Stay low,” Lucy called to the group. “Until you’re clear of the smoke. Follow Felicity and Fitz.” She stuck to Abaiah’s side, the two of them at the rear making sure no one fell behind.

Finally they made it to the trees safely, and took a moment to catch their breath in the clearer air. 

“You’re the strangest Quaker I’ve ever met,” Abaiah said bluntly.

Of course - the colours of their clothes, the slightly out of fashion cut, their modern oddness, their outsider status, even their opposition to the witch trials. Abby had assumed from the moment that they met that they were Quakers, a religious minority in these times when that was fatally dangerous. Lucy shrugged. The unspoken lie tasted like smoke as she forced a smile.

“I’ll take them home to Boston with me. Our congregation will assist them. You could come with us.”

“I have to find my husband,” Lucy said. “We’ll be fine.”

“I will tell Reverend Willard what you did here. If you’re in Boston, you’ll be welcome at the Old South Church. God be with you,” Abaiah said.

“Don’t ever let your children forget how brave their mother is,” Lucy replied.

Abaiah and the other women left through the woods. A moment later, Curt joined the remaining trio.

“I’m going to cover them,” he said, barely pausing.

“How the bloody-?” Fitz asked. Lucy hadn’t seen or heard the other man until he’d wanted them to, either.

Lucy leaned against a tree. “His witch?” she asked Felicity.

“I’m not going to be out-geeked by a _humanities_ prof,” Felicity scoffed. “Should we try to find Castle, or just meet him at the Lifeboat?”

Lucy looked back at Procter’s Ledge. It looked like most of the crowd had dispersed. “Lifeboat,” she decided. “But stick to cover. Who’s got the knife?”

Fitz handed it to her. “Everyone keep their eyes and ears peeled,” she instructed. “Stay close, and get behind me if anyone comes at us.”

The first one to join them at the Lifeboat was Clint.

“Did you see that shot?” he asked. “I mean, I wasn’t that far away, and I didn’t have to make it while jumping off a building or anything, but how many chances does a guy get to sever a rope noose with an arrow these days?”

“More in these days,” Lucy pointed out. “Thank you, Clint.” To his surprise, she offered a hug. She’d been a little standoffish with him since the Coulson revelation. She didn’t hold it against him, but between that and the fight with Foggy there were just too many emotions swirling around her brain. “How many of you came?” she asked.

“Just me and Curt. No one else around. Simmons wanted to come when she found out you were in trouble,” he added, to Fitz. “Damn near had to tranq her, to be honest. She can be kinda scary. And Peter wasn’t happy either. Curt dealt with Amy, or else she’d be here too.”

“Why’d you get back early?” Lucy asked.

“Oh. Uh – I found some things in the enemy base that we needed to get out of there ASAP and I can pilot a Quinjet, so, y’know.”

Lucy gave it another half hour before she started to worry and pace. No one suggested leaving. Clint would obviously have to stay for safety, Felicity needed a seat to pilot, and Lucy didn’t want to leave without half the team. Even Fitz didn’t suggest going back to Simmons without waiting, which Lucy was grateful for. Lucy would have to go back to the present and stay there. Somehow waiting here seemed easier.

Finally they came through the trees, Curt and then Frank with something between them – a body. Bill’s body.

“Everybody in,” Clint said, gesturing to the three of them. He climbed in, too. Neither of the former Marines said anything.

“Are you okay?” Lucy asked Felicity. “I don’t think Frank was trying to rub your face in it by bringing the body.”

“I know,” Felicity said quickly, flipping switches and pressing buttons. “I’m good. Really.”

“Okay,” Lucy agreed.

She got off the Lifeboat to find two new faces. A pair of teenagers, a tall boy with blond hair and a short girl with red-brown hair. They were huddled together, shoulders touching, watching everyone with wary eyes.

“Lucy, this is Wanda and Pietro. I thought they could come stay with us for a while,” Clint said, like they were houseguests in a normal time and setting.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m – well, like he said, my name’s Lucy. I’m a teacher. When I’m not – um – this.”

“Wanda’s a mindreader. The whole time travel thing is kind of a cat-out-of-the-bag situation,” Clint explained.

“Why would you put a cat in a bag?” Pietro asked, looking alarmed and disgusted. His English was good, but he had a noticeable Slavic accent.

“It’s an idiom,” Lucy said. “It means the secret is out. I’m not sure where it comes from, to be honest. We could find out together?”

They looked at each other.

“Tomorrow,” she added. “I don’t know what time it is, but I need to shower. And – I don’t even know. Not read the Oxford English Dictionary. Eat something, probably.” She heard the doors to the outer hanger open just before the Lifeboat flashed back into place. “Oh, um – there’s a body, in there. Russo,” she added, for Amy’s benefit. “Why don’t you kids go to the kitchen. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Please?” she added, when Amy looked like she was thinking about being stubborn.

“They’re okay?” Amy asked. Lucy nodded. “They’ve got like five minutes,” Amy warned, but led the teens away.

Frank and Curt carried the body out of the Lifeboat and laid it on the ground. They looked at it, at each other, and then at Lucy.

“I figured we shouldn’t leave him there,” Frank said. “I don’t know what we do with him, though.”

“That sounds like something to run up the chain of command,” Lucy said shamelessly. “In 3, 2,-”

The rest of the bunker team entered through the door from the Bat-entrance, which had more than enough room to land and store a Quinjet. Two Quinjets, probably, Lucy thought, since Clint had piloted one home. May was amongst the people who walked in. Lucy counted them off. Steve, Peggy and Sam, Coulson and May, Tripp and Skye.

“What’s going on?” Coulson asked, taking in the Puritan clothes and Frank and Curt outside of their cells.

“Not a gorram thing!” chirped Fitz. Simmons snorted. Fitz grinned at her.

If Felicity and Lucy’s laughter was a little hysterical – well, they’d earned that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments are always appreciated.


	21. And so the balance shifts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why me?” Frank asked finally. “Why did you – she – pick me? You were already doubling up. You could have gone back to yourself, or Steve, you could have found David - he found me, when I started prepping this - but you picked me.”

Lucy jolted awake scrabbling at her neck for a noose that wasn’t there. She still felt like she was falling, still anticipated that horrible sudden stop. “A dream,” she said aloud, cataloging the details of her room in the bunker to ground herself. Cold, white sheets, lots of blankets. All she could smell was her own fear-sweat, and she couldn’t hear anything. It was dark, with no windows, but according to the red numbers on the alarm clock, there wouldn’t be any light outside anyway. She got out of bed – she wouldn’t get back to sleep now, not with Felicity’s scream still ringing in her ear. She got dressed for running and went to use one of the treadmills to tire herself out.

Max coming out to the gym with his tail whipping back and forth was a heads up that she wasn’t alone in her plan. She could hear the thump, thump-thump of someone hitting the heavy bag. He’d slept down in the cells across from Frank whenever he could get in, or else on one of the lounge couches. He just scratched at the door after a couple hours if she let him sleep with her. She let him lick her face as she reconsidered the run. Did she want company? Frank was fine, she decided. She didn't have to put on a happy face with him. She walked into the gym. Frank had his back to the wall and his eyes on the door, pretending to take a drink of water.

“Just me,” she said. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice hoarse. “Course.”

Felicity had surprised Lucy a little by arguing when Coulson had tried to put Frank and Curt back in their cells, but Lucy had been onboard, and Fitz and Clint quickly agreed. She wasn’t surprised that he would use his newfound freedom immediately.

She started up the treadmill and got up to speed pretty quickly. Headphones weren’t exactly an option in this headspace, even in the safety of the bunker, and she could prop a book on the control panel and read, but taking notes was difficult and she wasn’t in a headspace to remember much, so she just ran. She didn’t often let herself focus on just one thing. She knew that multi tasking was her favourite avoidance technique, but for once her mind was blissfully clear. She ran until her knees felt like jelly and she was forced to stop. She hadn’t noticed, but Frank was seated on the ground with Max, his shirt soaked in sweat. Max was asleep with his head on Frank’s lap. How long had she been zoned out?

He leaned his head back against the wall. “I should get a shower,” he said.

Lucy nodded. “Me too. I’ll probably read in the lounge when I’m done. I don’t think I can go back to sleep.” She left the implicit invitation to hang there.

Frank was in the lounge when she arrived, book in hand, Max padding at her heels. He’d followed her into the bathroom and laid on the bathmat while she showered, the big dork. She was glad of the company, canine and human, but she sort of wished that she’d gotten to the couch first. Then it would have been on Frank to decide how close to sit. She sort of craved contact, but wasn’t it polite to sit at the other end of the couch? On the other hand, these couches were monstrosities. She’d seen Steve stretched out with room to spare, and they were extra deep as well. Sitting at the opposite end would be like sitting in the next county. And he had one arm slung across the back of the couch. That was an invitation, right? Or was he still angry? She was a people-pleaser at heart, even if she was stubborn enough to shove down the instinct sometimes, and the thought hurt, especially knowing that Foggy was also angry with her..

She sat cross-legged giving him about six inches of space. “You want to talk about it?” she asked, fiddling with her bookmark, not even sure what _it_ was.

“Those women were supposed to die. “You saved them all. That’s a pretty big change to history.”

“Not all of them,” Lucy said, remembering Alice Parker. “How’d you know that?”

“Amy asked me if the Salem witch revolt was as cool as it sounds in the history books,” he said, a ghost of a smile flicking over his face.

“I guess I’ll hear about it today. I don’t know. I’m still scared that we’ll come back and someone will be gone, but I just couldn’t….” She sighed. “The Colonel told me I wasn’t cut out for the field. My mom said that I didn’t have what it took to make the hard calls. I was looking at these women and my nerve failed.”

“Or you chose the path with potential casualties instead of the one with certain casualties,” Frank said.

“HYDRA has a structure. They’re organised, they have people already in place, already inside the halls of power. They’re better positioned to capitalise on uncertainty and power vacuums. I think you were right, and we should be willing to consider changes to the timeline. But I think I was right, that it’s really dangerous and risky and could easily leave us in a worse position. We need to be careful and decisive, not impulsive.”

“If it’s on the table, I can live with that,” he agreed. “You have to keep the big picture in mind. But if all you care about is the big picture, you lose sight of all the little moments that make it matter. HYDRA says they care about the big picture. Peace through order, that’s what Bill said. No more wars, no more strung out addicts having kids they can’t take care of. A good, safe life for everyone.”

“Peace through tyranny,” Lucy said softly.

“You’re nothing like her, you know. Not much like him, either.”

“I know,” Lucy said. It had pained her, all through her childhood. Now she didn’t know how to feel about it. “What was the future-past Lucy like?”

“You’re not going to be like her, either. You were right – that Lucy was different. Too many things have happened differently. I don’t think that time has to be a loop. I think she came from a bad future to create a better one. We didn’t interact for very long. I mostly – mostly it was the journal.”

“That made you trust her?”

He paused. “Yeah,” he said finally.

“You’re nothing like Bill.” She knew down to her bones that Frank would never have tried to have phone sex with her under false pretenses, would never turn on his best friend and work with the people who murdered his family. “Do you-”

“No.”

Okay, he didn’t want to talk about Bill. Fair enough. But he wasn’t the only one Frank had lost. “When I thought I lost Foggy, the worst part was knowing that I was all that was left of him. No one else would remember the sound of his voice, or the shape of his smile, or the annoying way he whistled just one line of a song, over and over. And someday I’d forget something about him. His favourite colour. The name of his first crush. And it would just be _gone_ , erased from the universe. I know that you’ve got Curt, and they existed in this timeline, but If you ever want to talk about them, I’ll listen. No matter how things are with us.”

He didn’t look at her for a long moment. She was about to crack open her book when he finally spoke.

“The last time I came home we went to Lisa’s school. Maria never told her when I’d be back just in case a mission came up or a flight got pushed. Hell, even on the plane I kept thinking God was gonna pull the rug out from under me. That’s the kind of shit he gets off on, you know? So I get to her classroom and they’re not even studying, they’re doing some kind of yoga.” He scoffed, and Lucy smiled. “And I stopped, just thinking – how could I have been a part of making something that perfect and beautiful and innocent? But she looks up and boom, she’s across that classroom floor, she’s in my arms. Teacher’s filming this shit on her phone, probably gonna put it on Youtube. But she can’t hold it steady because she’s bawling so hard. The other kids, they’re all going. And I cried harder than all of them. But not her, not my girl. Not my baby. She was holding me up, squeezing hard enough I thought I’d bust a rib, just – just holding me up. She said ‘I knew it, Daddy, I knew it.’” He still wasn’t looking at her, facing forward when she had turned to face him. She reached out and folded her hand over his. He tightened his fingers on hers, and they sat like that for a long quiet moment. The silence was comfortable, his presence more familiar than it had any right to be.

“Why me?” he asked finally. “Why did you – she – pick me? You were already doubling up. You could have gone back to yourself, or Steve, you could have found David - he found me, when I started prepping this - but you picked me.”

She considered the question. “You know you’re an exceptional soldier. Scout Snipers are trained to operate independently, and your record demonstrates that and an ability to lead, to plan when you were cut off or thrown into a dire situation. But more than that – I called around when I first got your file. Asked about you.”

“People talked to you?”

“I may have said I was a reporter doing a story and that Hannibal had mentioned you. I know details about him that most people couldn’t fake. Some of the stories didn’t land, didn’t happen that way in this timeline, but enough did to convince them that he trusted me.” She smiled faintly before addressing his question. “Your story pushes buttons for me. We’ve both always known that. Loyal soldier, framed by the government, on the run. Your daughter. I think you were supposed to remind me of my dad.”

“I don’t?”

She shook her head. “I see it. On paper it makes sense. But in person? No. I always thought Freud was full of shit.” It was the closest either of them had come to acknowledging the thing between them aloud, and she’d thought she was brave enough but she forged on, talking to avoid a response. “I don’t know what you were like before, but in the diner, before Bonnie and Clyde … there was no bullshit. That was refreshing, especially when everything else started to spin out. Even when you were supposed to be my enemy – you didn’t try to lie. When you didn’t want me to know something, you just told me. That made me feel like I could trust you. And I do, Frank. I still do.”

“Still?”

“Carol visited me in the Salem jail, tried to flip me. She said that giving you the journal was a suicide mission.”

His indrawn breath told her it was the truth, and she felt a whirlwind of emotions. Not anger, exactly – but hurt, certainly. They’d spent so much time talking about the journal and the information that he’d gleaned. He was going from memory, sure, but that detail couldn’t have escaped him.

“It’s not going to be that way,” he said. “That Lucy was different. Things happened differently. She grew up in HYDRA, I think. It doesn’t come out and say that, but since we found out about your mom - she was a double agent. Pretty young, from the sounds of it. And her dad was involved. She knew what happened to him, in this timeline, but she didn’t remember it that way. I think they worked together.”

“You mean the Colonel?” Lucy asked, surprisingly unaffected by the idea. There was a time when that had been all she had wanted.

Frank nodded. “I think maybe they set him up to separate you. As if that’s all it would take to stop you.”

“He’s not my bio-dad,” Lucy said, feeling her cheeks warm as she dodged the compliment. “That's Coulson. It – that came out right before I got you out of jail, and I wasn’t exactly a chatterbox. Doesn’t matter.”

Frank gave her a look like yeah, that mattered a hell of a lot, but continued. “I think it went real bad,” he said. “I don’t think she had people. I think she was all that was left. She looked-”

 _Lonely. Lost._ “Like you felt,” Lucy finished quietly. It made more sense now, why he had trusted the journal so much, why he had followed her plan, even when it ran counter to his instincts. He’d seen a kindred spirit, and then seen her die for that plan. Maybe he had even felt the instinctive pull that she did, the irrational urge to trust someone you didn’t know.

“Yeah,” Frank agreed, voice gravelly.

“I’d do it again,” Lucy said. “I will do it again, if that’s what it comes to, if we’re wrong and time loops. I think Carol thought I’d be shocked and betrayed, turn on you in some big dramatic way. I’m just a little sad, that I haven’t been someone you could trust.” She’d thought of herself as one of the good guys all the way along. Now she knew that Frank was one too, but she hadn’t really adjusted to the thinking that maybe she wasn’t in his mind. “This is me saying I’m all in, Frank. I trust you. I’m going to assume that we’re a team, even when we disagree.”

“All in,” he repeated. “It’s not going to happen that way, Lucy. I won’t let it.” His fingers tightened on hers where they were still holding hands.

* * *

Lucy woke up suddenly again, but not because of a dream. She didn’t immediately understand why she was awake and holding her breath. She was warm, and she was facing the back of the couch, with – with Frank behind her, coiled tight like a spring, and someone behind him giggling and whispering. He’d woken, she guessed, from the noise, and she’d woken either from that or his reaction to it. She forced herself to breathe.

“Aww,” Skye said.

Frank’s hand on her hip flexed and immediately let go. He put a little distance between them and she realised that he was hard. Which was a perfectly normal healthy physiological male response that she wasn’t going to take personally at all. Or acknowledge. Or dwell on. Ever.

“Pancakes?” she said, sitting up. She scrambled over Frank’s legs and straightened her clothes.

“Sorry, do you think that will distract us?” Amy asked, eyes dancing like this was Christmas morning. Her hair was in a messy bun, her eyes unpainted. She looked younger that Lucy was used to, and softer, wearing leggings and an oversized t-shirt. Apparently getting Frank and Curt out of lockup meant that she was forgiven, because pre-Salem Amy would never have let Lucy see her looking like this.

“We want all the juicy details!” Skye said, grinning brightly. Lucy was reminded that she was barely older than the kids, but it didn’t stop the annoyance from sparking in her chest. Frank’s fatal encounter with his former best friend made it exponentially worse than if the glee had been directed at her alone. It had always been easier to let loose her meanest side in defense of other people, and to fold like a cheap suit when something was only about her.

“I had a nightmare about being hanged, didn’t want to be alone, and fell asleep fully clothed in a common area,” she snapped. “But I’m so glad someone’s enjoying my trauma.”

“That’s not-” Skye began.

“Pancakes?” Lucy repeated, looking at Amy. The girl looked ashamed. Skye gaped at Lucy, who utterly ignored her.

Peter stuck his head out of his room. “Did you say pancakes?” he asked, bedhead wild and shoulders bare.

“I did,” Lucy agreed. “Invite the twins, please.”

“Okay!” Peter agreed and withdrew into his room.

* * *

Lucy wasn’t much of a cook, but even she couldn’t screw up pancake mix.

“Do you want help?” Amy asked, shifting from foot to foot. They were bare where they poked out from underneath her leggings, and they just added to her general air of uncharacteristic vulnerability. She had to be cold, but Lucy bit back the suggestion to go put on slippers. Amy wouldn’t appreciate something so maternal from her.

“You could set the table?” Lucy suggested. “Amy, I shouldn’t have snapped the way I did. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Amy said. “I’ve been kind of a bitch to you, even after you got Frank out of prison. And he didn’t exactly have a good day yesterday.”

“No, he didn’t,” Lucy agreed softly.

“Do you think they have maple syrup in Sokovia?” Amy asked, moving to the fridge. Emotional moment over. Lucy could roll with that.

“I don’t know,” she replied honestly. She was pretty sure they didn’t have it in HYDRA containment cells, though. She wasn’t sure how long they had been in there. She made a mental note to snag their files.

“I used your line in Salem,” she realised.

“My line?” Amy repeated.

“My mom got us locked up as witches and then came to offer me a way out. I told her the company was better on my side of the bars. Didn’t even really notice until later.”

“The company’s not so bad, out here,” Amy admitted shyly. Lucy smiled at her.

Frank joined them a moment later and stood next to Lucy to cook bacon and eggs, directing Amy to chop up some fruit. Peter was next, snagging a piece of apple and stepping back as Amy playfully held up the knife.

“This isn’t like an Edward-Rosalie thing, right?” He asked pointing between himself and Amy. Frank looked down at Lucy in confusion, but she was pretty confused herself. “I mean, Rosalie was my favourite and Amy’s great, but she’d also eat me alive.”

“What?” Lucy asked, baffled. Peter had access to the internet, sure, but he’d never mentioned _Twilight_ and Peter mentioned _everything._

“It’s important twenty-first century pop culture information!” Amy said defensively.

“What are we talking about?” Frank asked.

“Poorly written YA books about vampires that sparkle and stalking being romantic,” Lucy said.

“I mean, it’s not like he obsessively rereads her journal,” Amy said dryly. Peter choked on the apple, laughed, and held up a hand for a high-five.

“I have concerns,” Lucy said, watching Amy explain she was too cool for high fives.

“I’m not putting my hand down till you high five me,” Peter said stubbornly, shoving it closer to her face.

“Get away!” Amy insisted.

“I have regrets,” Frank countered, sipping from a mug of coffee.

“I’m not touching you!” Peter retorted. “Just high five me.”

Wanda and Pietro walked in and took in the scene, then looked at each other. Wanda took a seat that put her back to the fridge and gave her sightlines of them cooking and the doorway. Pietro walked over to slap Peter’s hand and snatch a few orange slices.

“Thank you! See, he gets it.”

“He took pity on you,” Amy argued. Pietro took the seat next to Wanda and the twins ate orange slices and watched Amy and Peter bickering like it was dinner theatre until the pancakes were served.

* * *

“So now that JARVIS is helping me with the history and historiography, I think we need new homework. I was thinking that you could find a popular story that you like and write about what it says about the society it comes from.”

“But it’s a story,” Peter protested. “It’s made up.”

“The stories we make up say a lot about us, as individuals and as societies. I’ll give you an example – who is the best knight in King Arthur’s court? Do you know the story of Camelot?” she asked the twins.

“Sword in the stone, round table?” Pietro asked.

“Exactly!” Lucy grinned at him. “So who’s the best knight?”

“Lancelot,” Amy said. “The guy boning the queen. What does that say about society?”

“Actually, a lot. Lancelot wasn’t always the best knight. He didn’t pop up until after the Norman invasion brought French nobles and French storytellers to England. Suddenly the idea of Courtly Love is all the rage and the real hero of this English court is a French guy, Lancelot du Lac.”

“Courtly Love?” Wanda asked.

“The idea that true love had to be doomed and impossible. Usually it was a married noblewoman and a lower class guy, an honourable but penniless knight or maybe a self-insert minstrel. Until then, Guinevere was faithful to Arthur. But in the world of Courtly Love, it was impossible to be married to your love.”

“Gross,” Amy said.

“I’m not really into tragedy, _but_ the stories centred women in a way that stories of chivalry generally didn’t. Eleanor of Aquitaine and one of her French daughters were big patrons of the movement.”

“Hm. So who was the best knight before?” Amy asked.

“Gawain. Arthur’s nephew, best friend, and the most capable and noble knight he had. He didn’t have a steady love interest. He had a different girl in every story, but my favourite is the story of Dame Ragnell. See, Arthur goes hunting one day and chases a stag until he’s alone and gets ambushed by a magician, Sir Gromer, who hates him. He doesn’t have his sword or his armour, he doesn’t have any backup, he’s in deep trouble. But he convinces Gromer that it wouldn’t be honourable to kill him like that, so Gromer makes a deal. He has a year and a day to solve a riddle and return. If he gets it wrong, he dies.”

“What’s the riddle?” Peter asked eagerly.

Lucy leaned in. “What do women want?”

Peter’s face fell comically. “Oh man, Arthur is so screwed.”

Lucy heard a quiet snort and looked up. Frank was leaning in the doorway listening in on the lesson.

“So Arthur tells Gawain, and Gawain’s like look, I don’t know either, but we’ve got a year to figure it out. We’re smart guys, we can do this. So they ride around the countryside asking everyone they meet and writing down every answer they get. But after a year, they’re nowhere. Nobody agrees. Everybody they asked gave them a different answer. Arthur could just hole up in his castle in Camelot with Excalibur and all his knights, but that’s not Arthur’s style, so he and Gawain head out. And on the way there, they meet this hag. She’s the ugliest woman Arthur has ever seen, but she tells him ‘I know who you are and I know where you’re going.’ She says ‘I’m Dame Ragnell, Gromer’s sister. He cursed me, so I’ll tell you the answer to his riddle, but in return I want Gawain to marry me.’”

Pietro drew breath in through his teeth with a sharp hiss.

“Arthur says, absolutely not. Gawain says, what are you, crazy? Arthur, you’re my uncle, you’re my best friend, you’re the best man I know, and you’re my king. I’m not asking your permission here, I’m doing this. Camelot needs you.”

“Gawain is a good bro,” Amy said. “He’s like the anti-Lancelot.”

“So Ragnell tells them the answer to the riddle, and Gromer’s furious, but he gave his word and Gawain is there to make sure he keeps it. They go home to Camelot and they start planning the wedding, and Ragnell insists on something big and public. She’s not gonna be a dirty little secret.”

“Good,” Wanda said simply.

“But, I mean-” Peter said.

“No,” Amy said.

“So they have the wedding, they have the reception, Gawain is in no hurry. The other knights are all razzing him about the wedding night because frat guys always existed, and finally Ragnell calls it, says let’s go to bed. So there they are, and Gawain is trying to work himself up-” Amy snorted. “To do his duty as a husband. And he turns around, and the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen is standing there. Ragnell explains that she’s under a curse. Marrying Gawain means she gets to look beautiful again – but only for half the day. She says, do you want me to be beautiful at night, when we’re alone together, or do you want me to be beautiful in the daytime, when we’re around other people? And Gawain remembers his friends. What would you choose?” she asked, curious.

“Nighttime, duh,” Amy said.

“Totally daytime,” Peter argued. “You can get laid in the daytime, and people won’t be like, pitying him and giving him a hard time and Arthur’s probably moping all guilty-like. Who’s going to believe Gawain if he’s just like, no she totally gets hot, you just can’t see her? And you’ll sleep most of the night anyway.”

“Who cares what other people think?” Amy demanded.

“Literally everyone, or why do you spend like an hour in the bathroom getting ready every morning?” Peter shot back.

The alarm went off.

“Gotta go,” Lucy said. Frank wasn’t standing in the doorway anymore. “I’ll finish it when I get back. Pick a story, tell me what it teaches you, and just for bragging rights, try to solve the riddle. JARVIS, please make sure there’s no cheating.” 

“Damnit,” Amy muttered.

“ _Certainly, Dr. Preston._ ”

* * *

“Stay away from her,” Steve ground out, catching Frank in the hallway. “Skye told me that the two of you were-” _sleeping together_ wasn’t right, his English-to-future inner translation provided, but he struggled to find an alternative that wasn’t an innuendo.

Frank paused and looked at him for a second. “Stay away from Lucy? You know she’s not your girlfriend, right? That’s the English bombshell down the hall. Unless history has changed again.”

“She doesn’t have to be my girlfriend for me to care about her,” Steve said.

“You got a problem, talk to her. Take it from a guy who was married to a woman who didn’t take shit. If you want that someday, you better learn to let women make their own choices. And if you want to be married to Carter, you might want to get a little less interested in Lucy’s choices.” Frank walked away without a backward glance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudos and comments always make me happy dance :) What do you think the answer to the riddle is?


	22. You don’t get a win unless you play in the game

“March 4, 1919, NYC,” Felicity said.

“I think that’s Woodrow Wilson’s last day in New York before leaving for Paris to negotiate the Treaty of Versailles,” Lucy said.

“So HYDRA assassinates Woodrow Wilson to mess with the Treaty?” Coulson asked.

“Maybe,” Lucy said. “I – I don’t know enough about how Thomas Marshall would have negotiated things to say with any confidence, but he was very concerned with procedure and precedent. He and Wilson hated each other so he didn’t have a lot of pull in the White House. He put in the rule that a filibuster could be blocked by a 2/3 majority, but refused to put a gag rule in place and let several war preparation bills go down, even though he broadly supported the war.”

“Broadly?” Frank asked.

“He was concerned that America was unprepared and would have to introduce conscription,” Lucy explained. “Which he was right about. When Wilson was debilitated by a stroke, his wife and advisors refused to inform Marshall officially. He was briefed by a reporter and he refused to take steps to take over the presidency without an official communication because he was worried about the precedent it would set.

“The controversial part of the Treaty of Versailles was Article 231, a clause that required Germany to accept moral and financial responsibility for the war and the damages it caused. There were those who thought the Treaty was too lenient, but economists like John Maynard Keynes thought the reparations were too harsh and would be counterproductive. The idea of being at fault and paying reparations instead of indemnities was novel – unprecedented. Wilson did fight the French and British on the phrasing, but the wording that was ultimately chosen was written by American diplomats. Maybe HYDRA thinks Marshall would have fought harder, or that he’ll be easier to influence.”

“So HYDRA wants to make Germany great again. Surprise, surprise.”

“It’s not that simple,” Lucy argued. “The Weimar Republic was very liberal. They had proportional representation, a social safety net, free press, collective bargaining. Not that it was easy, but one of the best places in the world to be gay in the 20s was Berlin. The Nazis burned a lot of books, but in some of the most famous pictures they’re burning the library of research done by Magnus Hirschfeld on trans people.”

“How did that turn into Nazis?” Peter asked.

“Culture war. They built support in rural areas where people felt that immoral socialist politicians in Berlin didn’t know or care what their issues were. And the ‘stabbed in the back myth’ – Germany surrendered because they were completely out of supplies. They had no ammunition left, but their soldiers were in good physical positions. The Western Powers never put boots on the ground in Germany. So Erich Ludendorff and Paul von Hindenburg, who had been in charge of the war and didn’t want to take the fall, could say that civilians at the home front – namely communists and Jews – had surrendered and betrayed the troops and the country. Anti-Semitism was already rampant – all over Europe, and in America, too. The economy started improving and ‘respectable’ ‘mainstream’ conservatives thought they could use the energy that the Nazis were stirring up to their own ends. They made Hitler Chancellor thinking they could control him.”

“Good thing everyone learned their lesson and nothing like that ever happened again,” Steve said dryly.

“The resentment from the Treaty helped the conservatives and fascists win power. It wasn’t the only factor, but changing it to something more favourable would be risky, if your goal is German domination. But what if Germany never went to war?” Lucy asked. “Hitler got a lot of good press in the West in the 30s as someone who was building up the German economy and morale. There were fascists in every Western country, openly associating themselves with Hitler and Mussolini’s movements. What if HYDRA put someone in 1919 with all our modern knowledge and became Hitler’s advisor, or his successor. What if they were more patient? Hell, even if they’d gone to war and not opened the second front against Russia we’d be in trouble,” she said.

“Shit,” Sam said.

“Alright, suit up,” Steve said. Frank headed for the costumes. “Not you,” Steve said. “We’ve got a team.” He indicated Sam and Felicity.

“I want Clint on this one,” Coulson said.

“The redhead,” Clint explained. “According to the SSR and SHIELD, she never showed up again, so we figure that wherever she came from, she’s on their time travel team now. She’s good. Without Peggy, she’d have handed me my ass.”

“So you’re going to track her down alone?” Lucy asked.

“We were playing her game that time. I see better from a distance.” Clint folded his arms.

“He can take my spot,” Sam said. “I don’t know that much about Woodrow Wilson, but I know he screened KKK movies at the White House. I might not be the best guy to get close.”

Steve nodded and turned to Felicity.

“1919 is still in ‘are women people, though?’ territory, right? Yeah, I’m okay to skip this one,” she said, and looked at Lucy. “Look, Clint’s more than capable as a pilot. And Car-HYDRA tried to kill us in Salem. Maybe it’s better to have more muscle. Castle definitely has that. I mean, not that I have to tell-” she flushed scarlet and broke off. “Three, two, one. I can see where the twins are in science,” she offered firmly.

“Thanks, Lis,” Lucy said. “Be a good example,” she told Peter.

“Peggy can come in Felicity’s place,” Steve said.

“Peggy was born six days ago,” Lucy said, the words jumbled by Peggy saying that no, she couldn’t.

She was surprised when Peter hugged her. “Be careful, Lucy,” Peter said, pulling away almost immediately.

The hit and run affection left her too distracted to worry about Steve, who looked at Tripp and Curt’s barely veiled amusement and stopped protesting.

“So Castle can go with Clint,” Steve said, as they neared the York Hotel, where Felicity said that President Wilson was staying. “And Lucy and I will talk to the Secret Service.”

“I work better alone,” Clint said. “No offense, dude. Didn’t exactly train with a spotter.”

Frank shrugged.

“If the three of you are together and you hit trouble, you can still split up,” Clint pointed out, not quite saying that Lucy would be useless against a HYDRA assassin.

Lucy had spent so long feeling invincible on missions, thinking Frank needed her to loop back and therefore couldn’t hurt her. In the days since Salem she’d been more wrapped up in the hurt of her mother’s choices. She hadn’t anticipated the fear, and she couldn’t find the nerve to argue with Clint. “Get over it, Steve,” she said with a sigh.

The sound of a gunshot just about stopped her heart. She blinked back to awareness in a crouch on the ground. The men were in a similar position, Frank and Steve each half-covering her with their attention on the room, so she couldn’t have lost much time. She’d been relieved when Sam begged off the mission. She knew she wasn’t in a good headspace. At the same time, she couldn’t exactly take time off. They had no one to replace her, not consistently.

“It’s upstairs,” Frank said, grabbing her elbow to help her up. “Lucy?”

“We’re too late,” she said. She’d talked too damn long about Germany, taken too long struggling with the unfamiliar fancy clothes.

They loitered in the lobby until someone in a police uniform came down and had a whispered conference with the ones on guard, then went back up.

“I’ll go ask what’s going on,” Frank said.

“No, I’ll do it,” Steve said.

She felt like she was back in the early days of Steve and Stark, but her patience was even shorter. She was half a second from telling Steve to take out his dick and measure if it was so goddamn important to him, and instead of doing that she walked up to the nearest cop herself.

“Excuse me sir. Was President Wilson shot?” she asked, wringing her hands a little.

“Sir, please control your wife.”

Okay, maybe she should have seen that coming, but seriously? She’d asked a simple, polite question. They weren’t in classical Athens, they were-

They were hours away from a crucial suffragette march. Would Carol really target that?

Frank was repeating her question, and the police officer told him that no, the victim had not been President Wilson, but wouldn’t say any more.

They walked back to Steve.

“It’s the Senator,” he said. “Shot in the head by some woman named Alice Paul. I got it out of a reporter.”

“Fuck,” Lucy said quietly.

“She’s important?”

“She’s going to found the National Women’s Party and lead it for fifty years. She’s one of the leaders in the effort to get women the right to vote, and to have gender included as one of the protected classes in the Civil Rights Act.”

“But not with a murder conviction,” Steve said.

“No,” Lucy agreed. “Even if she doesn’t get convicted, there’s a march today. She’s supposed to give a speech. What if that’s what caught Woodrow Wilson’s attention?”

“Is there someone else who could give the speech?” Frank asked.

“Maybe,” Lucy admitted. “Her best friend, Lucy Burns – they’ve worked together since they were cutting their teeth in the English suffragette movement.” She wished fiercely for Peggy’s presence. In addition to being British and probably more knowledgeable about their time in England, she was intelligent, well-spoken, quietly confident, and female. “But she was the diplomat to Alice’s firebrand, and she’ll retire after they get the right to vote, too exhausted and disappointed in all the women who didn’t help. Alice blocked Ida Wells from marching with the Chicago contingent-”

“Power struggle?” Steve asked.

“Segregation. White feminists: historically not anti-racist, to say the least,” Lucy said. “I’m not sure when that happened, though. If she made the trip. And she dies in ’31.”

“You could give the speech,” Steve said. “Like you wrote the letter.”

“I forged the letter,” Lucy pointed out. “I didn’t do it in my own name. I’m no one, and I’ll disappear in hours. They don’t need a martyr, they need a leader who’s in it for the long haul. We have to prove her innocence. Right now.”

“Or break her out,” Frank said, nudging her companionably.

Lucy cracked a smile, the rising panic short-circuited. Steve crossed his arms and frowned.

Steve asked the police officer at the front desk to see Alice Paul, but the scowling, heavyset man turned them away.

“We’re her lawyers,” Steve tried.

“She didn’t ask for a lawyer.”

Lawyers. “Is Grace Humiston in the building today?” Lucy demanded, getting only a scornful look from the cop. Frank stepped up behind her, probably doing the murder glare thing, and the man stepped back.

“I don’t know. She uses the visitor’s room down the hall sometimes. I’m not her social secretary.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said automatically.

“Who’s Grace Humiston?” Frank asked.

“One of Foggy’s heroes,” Lucy said excitedly. “She left her creepy doctor husband and got a law degree, started the ‘People’s Law Firm’. She worked for poor people, basically on a sliding scale. She was independently wealthy, so she would take cases for money or goods or nothing. She got attention in 1917 when a wealthy white woman went missing and the police bungled the investigation,” she kept her voice very low, Frank leaning in to hear her without risk of offending the cops whose cooperation they might need. Lucy knew that Steve’s hearing had been enhanced along with the serum, so he’d be picking up the whisper just fine. “She took the case pro bono and found the woman’s body in the basement of someone who gave kickback to the NYPD. She was appointed a special investigator to find missing women. That was two years ago. The press calls her Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.” She knocked on the door and heard a voice call for them to enter. She led the way in, feeling a little star-struck again, a little shy.

Mrs. Humiston was standing, writing in a small notebook. She was middle aged, wore her hair short, and dressed in head-to-toe black. Lucy knew she'd dressed in mourning since the death of her parents.

“I don’t take romantic disputes,” she said, abruptly. “If you want my advice, you have better things to do than waste your time and keen intellect on a married man, even if he is a soldier and a war hero.” She eyed Steve dubiously. “I don’t think the other one’s any better,” she said, and went back to her notebook.

“That’s not-” Lucy began.

“How’d you know all that?” Steve asked.

“You carry yourselves like soldiers, always checking behind you. And you’re clearly not a cop but you’re carrying a concealed weapon in a police station. What you’re both doing here when the war is still ongoing is a mystery, but-” she nodded at Frank. “He’s wearing a wedding ring. She’s not. You want to keep them apart.” She gestured at Frank and Lucy on either side of Steve, then turned her attention to Lucy. “And I’m betting he didn’t tell you about the wife at first, but that one’s just a guess.”

“Our personal lives are none of your business,” Lucy said, stepping up to her side of the table. That got Humiston to look up from her notebook again, first at Lucy and then over her shoulder.

“He’s a widower,” she said, a little softer this time.

“We’re not here about us. We have a case for you.”

“You must read the papers.” There was a mixture of pride and disdain there, like she wasn’t fond of being tokenized in the press.

“I do,” Lucy nodded. “A woman was arrested for a crime she did not commit. Alice Paul.”

Humiston nearly rolled her eyes and went back to her notes. “What did she do now?” It wasn’t the reaction Lucy had been expecting, and she hesitated.

“She was arrested for murdering Senator Wadsworth just this morning,” Frank said.

“A murder?” she repeated, finally intrigued. “Got herself into a pickle this time. Alice is a Quaker. Not exactly the violent type, nor is she the type to leave a murder weapon where it could be easily found.”

“How’d you know they found the weapon?” Steve asked.

“You said Wadsworth was killed this morning. How else could she have been arrested so quickly? Hmm. I’ll talk to Alice.” She didn’t make any move to get her hat.

“We could go with you?” Lucy suggested. “I don’t mean to rush you but this is something of an urgent matter. She has to give a speech at four o’clock.”

Grace rolled her eyes, but picked up her hat. “What she has to do is stop making speeches,” she said.

Humiston had to blackmail the cop on front desk duty to let them in to see Alice, but she shot Lucy a little conspiratorial half-smile as she won the battle of wills by guessing that he had a bottle of whiskey in his desk drawer.

He escorted them to the cell. “You have five minutes,” he said, and walked away.

“Hello, Alice,” said Humiston stiffly. The woman in the cell was delicate-looking, brunette, and poised despite her situation. It helped that she was wearing her own clothes – her request to be treated as a political prisoner had somehow been successful despite the murder charge, Lucy thought. Perhaps someone here had heard about the uproar it raised in England when the press reported that the prison matrons had been unable to force her to change without the assistance of male guards.

“Hello, Grace,” she replied, just as cold.

“I’m Lucy. This is Frank and this is Steve,” Lucy said. “We heard you’d been arrested and I don’t believe it. We asked Mrs. Humiston to help us prove it.”

Alice took her eyes off Humiston just long enough to nod politely at them.

The silence stretched out, Grace looking thoughtfully at Lucy.

“Where were you this morning?” Frank asked.

“I was in my room preparing for the march. Next thing you know, my door is kicked in and I have handcuffs on.”

“They found the gun in your room and we all know about your run-ins with Senator Wadsworth,” Humiston said.

“And we all know what you and your cop cronies think of the movement, but I’m innocent, Grace.”

“Well that’s not how it looks to the cops, Alice,” Humiston shot back. Lucy began to doubt the wisdom of this idea. She was obviously missing something that had happened between these women.

“You mean the cops that lock us up, that beat us, that call us militants? They have ample reason to want me imprisoned, don’t you think? I’d like you to leave,” she decided.

Lucy stretched out a hand to stop Grace, silently pleading with her to stay. She looked annoyed but turned back toward the cell. Lucy stepped closer to it. “Alice, we both know what’s going to happen in here. The hunger strike, the forced feedings.” Part of the reason she had come back to America had been to recover from the long term health effects of being force fed. Lucy didn’t know how much more of it her body could handle.

Alice was undeterred, eyes blazing with fervour. “I’ve done it all before. You want to help? Get the press in here. When they see how we’ve been treated, it’ll change more hearts and minds than anything I can say.”

“Not if they think you’re a murderer,” Lucy replied. Hunger striking had a deep history in both Irish and Indian history and had been adopted by the English suffragette movement. When they succeeded, they did so because they drew press coverage and public sympathy and made the political cost of holding the prisoner untenable for the state. Even in the present, though, there was a special, sensationalistic fascination with women murderers. This wasn’t the same as being arrested for civil disobedience.

There was a flicker of fear on Alice’s face before she raised her chin in defiance. Grace left. Lucy looked at the door, then back at Alice.

“We’re going to try to prove your innocence,” she said. “If we can do that before they release your name to the press, then even if they hold you, they’ll look like the guilty ones.”

“They are the guilty ones,” Alice said firmly.

Lucy nodded, then chased after Grace.

“You treated her like a criminal. She’s fighting on our behalf.” Lucy knew that she didn’t actually know Grace, but she’d felt like she did. This felt like a personal betrayal.

“On whose behalf?” Grace looked affronted.

“Yours. Mine,” Lucy said.

“What, women in general? Alice has no job, no husband and does nothing but create hysteria. You think she’s actually helping your cause? I don’t know about you, but I’d rather earn my respect than grovel for it. Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to talk to Detective Riley. Alice said her door was kicked in. That’s his trademark. You three wait here. Cops don’t like people they don’t know.” She walked briskly away.

“You weren’t expecting that?” Frank asked.

“No,” Lucy said. “I-” she shook her head. She was so tired of being disappointed. “Never meet your heroes, right? The first case she argued in court, she proved that an Italian immigrant had killed a would-be rapist in self-defence, saved her from the death penalty. She refused to be paid by the Italian consulate. She said she would rather do it ‘as woman for woman’. And she was the first female Special Assistant State Attorney. She was hired to track down a woman’s husband and launched a one woman campaign against peonage – like indentured slavery, almost. It mostly targeted immigrants. She snuck into camps herself, put herself in danger. Her whole career, she fought for the underdog, for people who didn’t have the money or status to be seen as important by society.”

“Maybe Alice Paul isn’t enough of an underdog,” Frank theorised.

“Alice Paul isn’t the kind of woman who’s most hurt by sexism. Neither am I,” Lucy said. “The women who are most hurt are poor, or immigrants, or women of colour, or LGBT, even where we come from. But sometimes they’re too busy surviving to do the work Alice is doing. Alice isn’t perfect, but they’re on the same side.”

“There’s Barton,” Frank said.

“Finally!” The man said, joining them. “I’ve been looking everywhere. There’s a HYDRA agent who infiltrated the suffragette movement.”

“Red?” Frank asked.

Clint hesitated, eyes on Lucy, and shook his head.

“How do you know?” she asked.

He swallowed, flicked his eyes to Steve and Frank, and then looked back at her. “Natasha – the redhead – she told me. She wants to work with us on this one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Based on Timeless 2x07 “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes”. Like Bass Reeves, I actually think Grace Humiston is cooler than the show lets her be. Felicity’s “Three, two, one” reset for herself is stolen from some Arrow episode.
> 
> Your Kudos and comments are always appreciated. Have a great Feb 14, no matter what kind of love you're celebrating!


	23. You get nothing if you wait for it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> “What’s the riddle?” Peter asked eagerly.  
> Lucy leaned in. “What do women want?”  
> Peter’s face fell comically. “Oh man, Arthur is so screwed.”
> 
> “Is Grace Humiston in the building today?” Lucy asked.  
> “Who’s Grace Humiston?” Frank asked.  
> “One of Foggy’s heroes. The press calls her Mrs. Sherlock Holmes.”
> 
> Clint spotted them. “Finally! I’ve been looking everywhere. There’s a HYDRA agent who infiltrated the suffragette movement.”  
> “Red?” Frank asked.  
> Clint hesitated, eyes on Lucy, and shook his head.  
> “How do you know?” she asked.  
> He swallowed, flicked his eyes to Steve and Frank, and then looked back at her. “Natasha – the redhead – she told me. She wants to work with us on this one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this one gets pretty political. Lucy and the other characters have opinons on complicated and controversial social justice issues.

“What?”

“You believe her?”

“Why?” Lucy asked, voice low and even.

Clint glanced back over his shoulder and nodded. The redhead joined him. Lucy could feel the men on either side of her tense and move closer. Steve tried to push her behind him, but she told him to stop.

“We’re in a police station,” she said.

“You were in a diner last time,” he said, and he imagined that he was thinking of Peggy, of the garrotte.

“Why do you want to help us?” Lucy asked.

“I’m a woman. Maybe I like the idea of voting.”

“Not good enough.” Lucy said. Frank took a step forward, but she put a hand on his arm. He stilled, but the muscles under her hand were tense and coiled to strike.

“Tasha,” Clint chided.

She glared at Clint, but he looked beseechingly at her and she softened. “My father,” she began simply. Lucy waited patiently, her hand still on Frank’s arm. Natasha pushed her hair back, revealing a scar near her hairline. “Dinner was cold,” she said. Lucy could feel the muscles move under her fingers as Frank's hand clenched in a fist. Natasha tilted her chin up, revealing another scar. “He lost his job. Mostly he was just angry for no particular reason. My mother tried to stop him, and so he would hit her. And one day – one day he was drunk and didn’t stop. After that he gave me to the people I work for. I don’t even remember her face. But if she had been able to vote, own property, be independent, then maybe – maybe….” She trailed off. Lucy had no confidence in her own judgement, not anymore. She had no frame of reference for how good Clint’s was. She looked at Steve first, expecting anger over Peggy. He nodded. Maybe that ought not to surprise her. As protective as he was of his people, he was also an idealistic and merciful person. She looked at Frank, expecting cynical disagreement. He was still watching the red-haired assassin.

“What happens after today?” he asked.

“I go back. I work for them,” she replied, no hesitation.

“Why? If they’re willing to do this, if you’re willing to cross them-” Steve broke in.

“I left someone there. Another weapon. They gave him a new arm, so he couldn’t come on this mission.”

Lucy couldn’t see a lie in her face, but she also had no baseline for this woman. Frank finally turned to Lucy.

“I’m in,” he said gruffly.

“What can you tell us?” Lucy asked.

“Alice Paul is dead,” she said. “John Garrett ordered Grant Ward to kill Lucy Preston. The agent is posing as a suffragette. I know her face but I do not know her assumed identity.”

“You will identify her?” Lucy asked. The other woman nodded.

“Orders?” Clint asked. It shook Lucy a little. Steve looked to her for advice because she knew the history, but she’d never considered herself to be in command of him. When they disagreed they argued until they reached some kind of agreement. Frank in Salem, yes, but that was different. Clint, though – Clint came from SHIELD, from a chain of command. Had Coulson told him to take her orders?

“Find a blind along the parade route. Don’t hurt anyone ‘local’,” she ordered, looking at Natasha, who nodded. “When she identifies the other agent, take her out.”

“What about Ward?” Clint asked.

“Do you know anything else about his movements?”

She shook her head in the negative. “We operate separately. I report to Carol Preston, not Garrett. This operation is a joint effort, but we got our orders independently.”

“We’ll keep working the case from this end,” Lucy said. “Hopefully we get a chance to take the agent out before the parade. You two stay together. Clint, you know our protocols if we miss a check-in.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Incoming,” Steve said. Clint and Natasha peeled away.

“The police got the tip off from a bellhop who was dealing dope. He admitted that it was a lie he’d been instructed to tell via this note. It’s unsigned.” Grace held it up triumphantly. “Maybe Alice will recognise the handwriting.”

“Maybe,” Steve agreed, looking at Lucy with sadness. She took a deep breath. She hadn’t even begun to problem solve the gaping hole that now existed in American feminism, but Grace was so observant. She tried not to think about it.

“What did I miss?” Grace asked.

“It’s not important now,” Lucy said. “Can you get us in to see Alice again?”

* * *

They found Alice dead and then returned to Grace’s office/visitor’s room to regroup, though Grace sent the boys out for sandwiches, and Lucy tried not to worry about the argument they would have over who would retrieve the food and who would stay to guard the police station.

“They’re calling it a suicide,” Grace said. “I don’t buy it either.” She was energised, and while Lucy could intellectually understand it – a double murder, the killer trying to cover her tracks – it grated on her. “Whoever killed Wadsworth took care of Alice to shut her up. Catch the guy, solve two cases.”

“She’s not just a case and she wasn’t supposed to die, not now.” Alice Paul was meant to live into her nineties. Lucy knew she couldn’t afford to mope, but she was so tired of being scared and uncertain and surrounded by death.

“Every murder is tragic,” Grace said. It was almost off-hand, and just like a spark in drought season, Lucy’s anger was ablaze.

“Alice Paul is not every murder!” she said angrily.

“Because she’s rich?” Grace asked. “Because people will recognise her name in the paper, that makes her life worth more?”

“Everyone’s life has inherent worth. But Alice’s work made her important to people she’d never even met. People who haven’t even been born yet.”

Grace made a scornful noise. “Speeches and marches don’t change the world. Never have and never will.”

“Voting changes the world,” Lucy argued. “This speech could have been the spark to inspire a movement.”

“Well that’s not my job,” Grace said. “My job is to solve the case. You can help or you can get out of my way.”

Lucy swallowed down the angry retort. Grace was the subject matter expert and the local. HYDRA had an existing infrastructure to plug into, but Lucy's team didn't. They needed Grace. “What do we do?”

* * *

When the boys were back, they headed to the suffragette headquarters, where the women clearly recognised Grace. For her part, Lucy recognised Lucy Burns and assumed the other women gathered in a corner with her were other leaders of the march. Grace headed over to them and broke the news, Lucy and the boys following her lead. They were all distraught, and one – a woman with dirty blonde hair in a low chignon – accused Grace of being part and parcel.

“She’s not one of the cops,” Lucy said. “She humiliated the cops in the Cruger case, you know that. She fights for women, too, just – differently.”

“She thinks what we do is silly,” said a strawberry blonde. Grace didn’t disagree.

“Charlotte, Mary,” chided the other Lucy. “This isn’t helping. Alice wouldn’t want-” she broke off, choked up with tears.

“Who are you?” demanded Charlotte.

“We believe in Alice’s innocence,” Lucy said. “We still believe in her message. We’ll do whatever we can to help today.”

“Today – no,” Burns said. “No, Alice was special. I think we all need a little time.”

“The president leaves the country tomorrow. This – who knows when you’ll get another chance to get this close?”

“It seems disrespectful,” agreed Charlotte.

“It would be disrespectful not to honour Alice’s legacy,” Lucy argued. “Everything she stood for, everything she sacrificed-”

“There will be other marches,” Burns said, voice sounding definitive.

“Ma’am,” Steve said. “I had this my best friend all my life, a guy who pulled me out of scrapes before I uh, hit my growth spurt. Guy who was there when my mom died and wouldn’t let me grieve alone, wouldn’t take no for an answer when I was too stubborn for my own good. He died. Right in front of me. One second he was there and – and I wasn’t fast enough. And I was ready to quit. I was feeling pretty sorry for myself. But my best girl, she told me off. Told me that I was doing him a disservice, blaming myself. He made his choices because he believed in them. Because he believed in _me_. And I had to carry that through, to the end of the line.” His voice almost dropped out at the end, but the other Lucy reached out a hand and gave his hand, twisting the brim of his hat, a squeeze.

She nodded firmly. “A vigil,” she said. “We march, but silently. Show our resolve and our respect for Alice at the same time.”

Lucy looked at Steve and Frank. Would it be enough? A silent march could be powerful. But would the women hold their resolve in the face of the jeers and insults they were sure to face? Would they be allowed to march, or did HYDRA have other tricks up its sleeves?

“I have to tell the others,” Burns said.

The time travellers huddled as she made the announcement and Grace watched the reactions of the room.

“Will it be enough?” Steve whispered.

“I can’t know that!” Lucy snapped. She covered her mouth. “Steve, I’m sorry,” she said.

“I know that you’re doing your best, Lucy,” he said gently.

“I suggest a vote,” Grace said loudly. “I’d like to see a show of hands?” Lucy’s jaw dropped. Was she serious? “Everyone in favour of the silent march raise your hand.” All around the room, hands went up. Almost every single one.

“It’s settled, then,” said the other Lucy. “Vigil it is.”

Grace turned to their group, looking pleased with herself.

“Now you're in favour of voting?” said Lucy bitterly.

“You have a difficult relationship with your mother, don’t you?” the older woman said seriously.

“How – never mind, I don’t care. You can see that, but you can’t see that not everyone is smart and tough enough to be twice as good at a man’s job for long enough to be taken seriously? That they shouldn’t have to be?” Lucy’s fraying temper had snapped at the reminder of her mother. “You set up your law firm to help people that no one else would help, but you look down on women who can’t make it on their own? You left your first husband when he was caught taking advantage of his patients, but what if he’d been the kind of man who’d have killed you for leaving? You must have met them, doing your job. What if you hadn’t had your family’s money? You’ve known women like that. What if you had children, and you were afraid they would starve to death?”

“I find the missing, I catch the murderers. I do help those women,” Grace snapped.

“Dead women, you mean. What about everyone else?” Lucy was vaguely aware that her voice had risen. 

“Everyone else isn’t my problem.”

“The peonage camps weren’t your problem,” Lucy retorted. “You made it your problem. And so did Alice. You only get one vote, no matter how rich or poor you are. Give them the vote so they can make laws to stop rich people from trampling all over them, instead of relying on them to occasionally take pity. Give women the vote so they can make laws to jail the men who beat them and their children because dinner was cold. They deserve that, and the world deserves to see what they could do if they didn’t spend so much energy just getting through the day. 

“Alice was white and rich just like you. She could have lived a safe life. But she made it her problem, Grace. She put her body in front of the police and she went to prison and she endured force-feedings so that you would be just as important in the eyes of the law as a drunk bully of a cop and a dope-dealing bellboy. So you could pretend that you were smart enough and tough enough to make it into the boy’s club, even though they don’t like or respect or trust you. They’ll turn on you the second they think they can get away with it, Grace. Alice fought so that women would have the tools to rescue themselves. You don’t like that she was only fighting for white women? Don’t let perfection be the enemy of progress. Show up, like they do. Push the suffragettes further. Fight for what you believe in, like they do. Even if it means that you don’t get to be the hero with your name in the paper.” It was a low blow, a nasty hit aimed at the mixture of pride and embarrassment she’d seen when the other woman had talked about the papers before. “But if you’re not the woman I thought you were, Grace, then just get the hell out of the way.” Grace looked stung by Lucy throwing her own words back in her face.

“Maybe you should give the speech,” said a young suffragette, eyes wide.

“Maybe I will,” Lucy said. Her heart was pounding and her breath was coming fast. She felt the overwhelming urge to run and forced herself to keep to a brisk walk as she turned and left the headquarters, trailed into an alley by Steve.

“Lucy,” he called. “Lucy! HYDRA wants to stop the speech. They’ll shoot whoever goes up there.”

“And Grant will shoot me wherever he sees me,” she snapped. “Why should we risk someone else’s life?”

“You said it yourself, they need a leader, but they need a leader here, not someone who’s going to jump in a time machine.”

“They’re grieving. Maybe if I just buy them a little time-” 

“I’m not going to let you get hurt,” Steve said stubbornly. “Not any more than I already have.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re different, Lucy. You killed a man, and you broke a terrorist out of prison, and you get angry with me over nothing, and it all traces back to Castle! He doesn’t even care about you.”

Bass Reeves had been right. She had dreamed of Jesse James. But she had been right, too. It was better than dreaming of the Alamo. “I wasn’t going to lose Sam like we lost Tony. And I’m angry all the damn time, Steve, because my entire life was a Nazi lie. Anger is an appropriate response to that revelation, as I’m sure Dr Dumont would tell if-”

“If she wasn’t HYDRA too,” Steve finished, nodding. “I get it.”

“Do you? How would you feel if you found out that Bucky was HYDRA?" Anger flashed over Steve's face at the hypothetical insinuation. She dropped it. "This isn’t Castle, this is me. What happened to respecting your friends? What happened to Peggy’s advice? Hell, what happened to Peggy?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You got the love of your life back and my life got blown up! And instead of supporting me and cherishing her like she deserves you’re meddling in my life, acting disapproving because I don’t hate the guy who’s saved my life multiple times.”

“He’s dangerous. And if you can’t see that, maybe it’s not the-” he broke off.

“Go ahead. Maybe it’s not the first time.” She shook her head at him. “I’m glad Tony’s not here to see this, because you’re living down to all of his worst expectations and I’m fucking sick of doing all the emotional labour to allow you to function on this team.” She pushed past him, back into the headquarters, and rounded the corner half blind with tears, only to run into a wall of muscle. She stumbled and Frank reached out to steady her.

“C’mon,” Frank said gently. “There’s a diner around the corner.”

“So what’s up with Captain Sunshine?” Frank asked as they took their seats.

“He’s just worried about me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I was never the emotional one. I was always – Grant called me cold, and he wasn’t the first.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Frank said, catching the waitress’s attention. “Do you always serve bullshit here, or is that just her?”

The woman tsked at his language, but she was laughing. “I’ll be right back with your menus, sweetheart,” she said.

“Okay, maybe I know what’s wrong,” Lucy admitted. “But I don’t have time to have PTSD right now.”

Frank shook his head. “That’s not your problem. Your problem is that you’re trying to pretend that your heart isn’t broken.”

“It isn’t,” Lucy said. “Steve and I – it was a kiss. It was a might-have-been. It wasn’t even something I’d been waiting on, or whatever. It came out of nowhere, for me. I can bury my head in the sand about things like that.” She carefully didn't think about waking up on the couch.

“Doesn’t have to be about romance. People that can hurt you, really hurt you, are the ones that are close enough to do it. People that get inside you and tear you apart and make you feel like you’re never gonna recover. Shit, I would chop my own arm off right here in this restaurant, just for the chance to feel that one more time for my wife. She didn’t just break my heart. She … she’d rip it out, she’d tear it apart, she’d step on that shit, feed it to a dog. She was ruthless, she brought the pain.” Even as the deliberate reminder of his wife stung, Lucy couldn’t help but half-smile. She’d never have guessed that, from the files and the social media and the tributes she’d read. Maria had always been smiling warmly, hair always perfect in an effortless sort of way, usually wearing a pretty dress. She had an elegance about her even when she looked casual. “I’d give anything,” Frank repeated. “To know that she’ll be able to hurt me again.”

“She will,” Lucy promised, hand reaching out to clasp his. She didn't think about how it might come across until she'd done it, but he didn't pull away.

“You can be wrong about people and still the smartest person I know. Just don’t tell David,” he said, with a one-sided conspiratorial smile. He leaned in over the table as he said it, and Lucy smiled back. His pilot, she remembered. The hacker Hill had recruited out of their holding cells. “You can love people who let you down, Lucy. And you can mourn people who didn’t ever exist.” He leaned back in his seat, but his fingers tightened on hers.

The idea of mourning someone who never existed hit her hard,stealing the breath from her lungs. It wasn’t just in an alternate timeline way. The mother of her memory, who had been too controlling to deal with Lucy as an adult, but had had loving moments, when she was young. A woman she’d respected, at least. A woman she never would have imagined would be the leader of a secret cabal of fascists. Her father, even. Both of them. Both brilliant at talent-spotting and known for close team dynamics, and neither of them had evidently thought Lucy worth nurturing or keeping close. The Grant she had agreed to marry – sharp, sarcastic, thoughtful and occasionally gallant. And Foggy, who she’d always been so close to, the other half of her heart, who had chosen Matt and a life that she wasn’t part of. She was proud of him for that but at the same time – yeah, that broke her heart. She felt like her heart was nothing but sharp broken edges these days, and she was just trying to keep from hurting everyone else with it.

“Here you are,” the waitress said cheerfully as she put down the plates, and Frank pulled his hand away from Lucy’s. She felt a little bereft, and maybe it was her imagination, but his smile for the waitress didn’t have the same power that it had in 1934. The silence could have been comfortable, if it weren’t for her guilty conscience.

“I think we should give the suffragettes a crash course on non-violent protest.”

“I’m not gonna be much help there. I'm not exactly a non-violent guy.”

“You know a lot about keeping your cool when you’re scared and your adrenaline’s pumping. The US Army spent a lot of time and money teaching you to make good decisions in bad situations.”

“It’s more about practicing until they’re not decisions anymore, just muscle memory.”

Lucy glared. He was being difficult, and he knew it. Frank raised his hands in surrender. 

“I’ll figure something out,” he said, smiling. “What about Grace?”

She pushed her food around her plate. “I don’t know,” she admitted.

“Now you know how I felt, trying to get you on board.”

“That is not the same!” she protested, but she could feel her lips curled up in a smile. “I’m serious, Frank, I have legitimate concerns!”

“Of course you do,” he said blandly.

“God, you’re such an asshole,” she said, a little too loudly. The waitress turned and gave her a scandalised look, nothing fond or indulgent about it. Frank lost it, laughing until tears leaked from his eyes. Lucy didn’t give a damn about the waitress.

* * *

Steve was back at suffragette headquarters and helped them prepare the suffragettes for the march, frowning most of the time but not necessarily at Lucy. She marched with the suffragettes, aware of Steve and Frank dogging her on either side of the parade route and wondering where Clint and Natasha were.

Suddenly she felt the barrel of a pistol shoved against her ribs. “Over there,” Charlotte hissed, indicating an alley. Lucy looked for her backup, but a scuffle had broken out and she didn’t see them. She did as she was told, not wanting to risk bystanders if she had to fight. Maybe Clint had her in his sights.

Then again, maybe Natasha had killed Clint.

Charlotte walked her into the alley. “Any last words I can pass along to your mother?” she asked.

“Tell her she can go to hell,” Lucy replied. The gun clicked on an empty chamber, and it took her a breath to figure out that she wasn’t dead. Another thing she'd have nightmares about, if she lived long enought to go to sleep again.

“Looking for these?” Grace asked. Charlotte and Lucy both looked as Grace poured a handful of bullets onto the ground.

A gunshot went off behind Lucy. She spun, and Natasha stood at the other end of the alley, gun raised. Charlotte fell to the ground.

“What are you doing?” Grace demanded, shocked.

“I was wondering the same thing.”

Lucy felt like she was at a damn tennis match, spinning from one direction to the other. Grant had followed Grace into the alley, and he was looking at Natasha.

“Down!” she ordered Grace, pulling her behind the meagre cover of a barrel as the two HYDRA agents started shooting.

“What is happening?” she asked.

“The guy was my fiancé,” Lucy admitted.

“And your mother?”

Lucy took a shaky breath. “It’s been a really difficult year.”

“You know, Lucy, HYDRA would forgive you if you brought us those two little freaks. Or forget you. Even Carol would trade you for the twins,” Grant called.

Lucy bit back the urge to tell him to go fuck himself. He might be trying to figure out their position to shoot through the barrel.

The gunshots had stopped, but Lucy kept Grace behind the barrel as she heard the noise of hand-to-hand combat. Then Natasha was thrown back into Lucy’s line of sight and she could hear Grant run off. He just barely missed Clint, Steve and Frank, who drew on Natasha.

“Grant was here. Thank you, Natasha. She and Grace saved my life,” Lucy said. She drew the older woman to her feet, willing the boys not to say anything untoward. “And there’s still the speech,” she reminded them.

“If Ward is out there-” Steve protested.

“This is important. Pushing back winning the right to vote by a year, five, ten – it could be disastrous. This needs to happen now, " Lucy said, frustrated that they couldn’t speak freely. 

“Let’s go,” the redhead agreed, nodding. The men exchanged a quiet word, Steve gesturing as he gave orders, Natasha listening intently. Lucy left them to it.

“Are you alright?” she asked Grace.

“You were right, before,” Grace said. “I have put myself in danger. And I have – I’ve made safe choices, before. Selfish choices. That man - he's a killer. Your friends think that man will be waiting for you.”

“Like you said, they’re soldiers. They’re going to do their best to protect me.”

“I’m mostly an investigator now, Lucy. But I was a lawyer first, and a teacher before that. I know how to make a persuasive argument. You’ve shunned the spotlight, and now I know why. Some of why. Some of it doesn’t make any sense at all.” She furrowed her brow as though Lucy was something completely foreign. She took Lucy’s hands in her own. “With your permission, I’d like to make the speech.”

Lucy nodded. “We’d better hurry, then.” They headed out of the alley, walking briskly to catch up with the parade. “How’d you know who the killer was?” Lucy asked.

Grace looked down, a satisfied smile on her face. “The note to the bellhop was written by a woman and a lefty,” she explained. “A suffragette could’ve easily planted the gun in Alice’s room. Anyone else would have tried to use the bellhop. So I suggested they take a vote and watched them. Only one woman raised her left hand to vote. I found her gun in her things, and unloaded it just in case.”

“You saved my life,” Lucy said. “Thank you.”

“It’s always good, when I can get ahead of a killer,” Grace said. She hesitated, and Lucy could see into the space she kept in her heart for the women who had to die before she got to them. "It doesn't happen enough." Lucy didn't have the words to undo the cruelty of her earlier jabs, so she just squeezed Grace's hand and hoped it was enough.

* * *

The suffragettes were silent, as planned, until they were toe-to-toe with a line of police sneering and jeering and smacking billy clubs against their palms, onlookers on either side calling insults.

“Votes for women!” shouted one woman, then a chorus of them. The police started shoving, then kicking and punching and using the clubs. The suffragettes fought back or tried to shield themselves and their friends, the whole thing spiralling. Some of them shouted for the President, who was walking past and into the hotel as though nothing was happening. Lucy, near the back of the crowd of suffragettes, was nearly hit in the back of the head by a rock, but Steve caught it out of the air and turned on the man who had thrown it. He and his friends blanched and took a step back, but Steve advanced on them wiht purpose.

Frank and Grace had found a bench for her to stand on, and he let out a piercing whistle.

“Stop!” Grace shouted. “Stop! This must stop! Alice Paul was supposed to be here today, but she lost her life in the same struggle that our Founding Fathers fought. The struggle we must all fight, every day – even when we think we are immune. To lift up those who are oppressed, who are not treated as equals in the eyes of men or of the law. For how long can men ask us to accept what Abigail Adams did? That men – rich, white men – continue to treat the rest of us as though we are less, simply by the circumstance of our birth. That the men in charge turn brother against sister, and sister against sister, and give just enough of us just enough to feel superior to our fellow, and ignore their struggle, and tell ourselves that we deserve better because we are better. I am not ashamed of my sex. And I have never been prouder than I am today. Your mothers deserve respect. Your wives deserve justice. Your daughters deserve freedom. Votes for women!”

“Votes for women!” The crowd of suffragettes chorused. Wilson stood transfixed, staring at Grace. Finally he tipped his hat. The police were backing off – not all of them, not entirely, but enough for the march to continue, turning to go back to the headquarters as planned, now chorusing "Votes for women". Lucy felt the buzz of the crowd's euphoria. Grace climbed down and was immediately mobbed by admiring suffragettes. She disengaged them and found Lucy, looking nervous.

“That was amazing. I couldn’t have done any better,” Lucy said.

“Your mother ought to be very proud of you,” Grace said gently. She was swept up in a crowd of suffragettes before Lucy could force words through the lump in her throat.

“Okay?” Frank asked, yelling into her ear. He was standing close to her, shielding her from the movement of the crowd.

Lucy nodded.

“Can we get out of here?” he asked.

She considered. Grant could kill Grace, if he thought she might become important, correct the timeline. But the moment that they’d all been hung up on had passed, and HYDRA could go after Grace at any moment of her life. Just like Peggy, the team couldn’t guard her forever. Unlike Peggy, Lucy didn’t think she was central enough to HYDRA’s plan to merit that level of attention.

She nodded. “We’ll have to take Natasha.” She looked at him warily, expecting an argument.

“You give the orders,” he said with a shrug. He kept a straight face but there was something like a twinkle in his eye that made her think he was mocking her for being surprised by Clint earlier.

“Shut up,” she said, smiling against her will.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and smirked at the ground.

“Quit laughing at me, jerk,” she said, punching his arm.

“I’m not even laughing!” he objected, clutching his arm as if it had hurt.

“You are too! On the inside.” That made him tip back his head and laugh out loud. It was a good look on him, she thought absently. It was infectious, and she found herself grinning.

Steve turned away from the lecture he'd been giving the onlookers and looked at the two of them with the kind of face you’d make after sucking on a lemon. It sucked the joy right out of Lucy and she couldn’t help but resent him for that. They had so little of it, these days.

* * *

“Everyone’s okay?” Felicity asked. Lucy got off the Lifeboat alone and Clint flashed back to pick up the others. Frank and Steve had both insisted on staying with Natasha, though Lucy privately thought the two men were likelier to fight each other than the assassin.

“Everyone’s fine. We, uh – Clint found the red haired assassin.” Lucy saw Peggy and got nervous. “She helped us. She stopped Grant from killing me, but he got away, so it’s not safe for her to go back.”

“Clint,” Coulson groaned.

“Oooh intel,” Peggy said brightly, rubbing her palms together.

“Story!” Amy demanded, dragging her away from the spymistress and over to the other kids. The Lifeboat landed again, and Clint was first out, which meant he’d leapt over people to get there. Natasha followed him closely, Clint with a hand behind him like he was acting as a human shield.

Peter ignored the spy and soldier tension. “What’s the answer to the riddle? What do all women want?”

“You first, what are your answers?” Lucy asked.

“Honesty,” Wanda said.

“Love!” Peter bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Respect,” Amy said, arms folded.

“Safety,” was Pietro’s quiet answer.

“So who's right?” Amy prodded, when Lucy got distracted.

Peggy approached Natasha and Steve tensed, but Peggy extended her hand and the other woman shook it without any kind of violence.

“Sovereignty,” Lucy said. “The right to choose her own fate." She looked back at the kids. "Which is why Gawain told Ragnell that _she_ should choose when she wanted to be beautiful, and with that, the spell was truly broken, and she got to wear her own beautiful face all the time and they all lived happily ever after. So what stories did you choose?”

“Did you know that Robin Hood used to behead like _all_ the monks?” Peter asked eagerly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Natasha is the Emma we deserved, but Grant is the Emma we need right now. 
> 
> Grace Humiston didn't leave a lot of papers or writings about herself or the way she viewed the world, so I can't say that the intersectional feminist I've written here is accurate, but the things that Lucy lists off about her are true. She did go out of her way, and even into danger, to help people who weren't a priority for many people.
> 
> The facts of Alice Paul's life and the mixed history of feminism more generally is also true. White, cis, straight leaders have frequently excluded others, either out of active prejudice or the passive attitude that it was not their fight or that it was just too hard to also fight other prejudices stacked on top of sexism. People also had a lot of different reasons for their advocacy. In Canada there was a big split between maternal feminists like Nellie McClung, who argued that men and women belonged in different roles/spheres but that women needed the vote to perform their duties as the "angel of the home" and equal rights feminists like Agnes MacPhail, who said "I'm not a lady, I'm a human being."
> 
> I always love hearing from you guys!


	24. So scared of what your enemy will do to you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Previously:  
> "How would you feel, if I was keeping things like this from you? Jesus Luce, I knew you were mad at me for leaving you-" Foggy said.  
> "That isn't-" She couldn't bring herself to finish, and his judgemental silence made it clear that he knew it. "Mad isn't the word I would use."  
> "I have a life, Lucy. I have a boyfriend, and you are so upset about it that you just cut me off from the stuff that matters. How is that fair? How is that okay?"  
> "It's not. It's not like that, it's just that Frank and I are trying to figure out what was in the journal, and I'm reading all Mom's work, and it's just a lot, okay?"  
> "Frank? And why are you reading Mom's work?" Shit. Lucy usually kept it together better than this, but she was used to being entirely honest with her brother.  
> "Frank is here. In a cell! He rescued me, when Grant ... Grant said some things, when he had me, about Mom being involved in all this. We haven't been able to vet them."  
> She expected an explosion of well-deserved anger, but all she heard was a dial tone. "Foggy?"

* * *

~~~~Sam knocked on her door and she let him in, taking a seat on the bed and leaving the desk chair for him. He sat backwards on it, folding his hands on the chair back.

“Just thought you should know that I talked to Steve about being so weird with Frank.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“I think you and I need to talk, too.”

“About Frank?” Lucy asked warily.

“I mean, if you want. But no, I meant – Lucy, you know that I know the symptoms of panic attacks, right? I know what hypervigilance looks like. A diagnosis of PTSD is above my paygrade and requires more time than has passed, but I’m worried about you, is what I’m saying. After the Alamo, you knew you needed help, and you asked for it. You’re very perceptive.”

“Yeah, Dr. Dumont said the same thing,” Lucy agreed. “Of course, she turned out the be the Nazi girlfriend of my Nazi pretend fiancé. Not to be mixed up with my Nazi real (ex)fiancé.” Sam looked more worried, and she sobered. “I’m not ready,” she admitted. “It would be a waste of a therapist’s time. I’m not prepared to open up like I would need to, to make progress, and if I was HYDRA I know I’d have put a lot of personnel into psych. Whoever’s left has got to be up to their eyeballs in caseload.”

“Your needs are just as important as other people’s, Lucy.”

“I know,” she said, because she did _know_ it, even when it was hard to _believe_ it. “But I’m not ready. And I’m coping.”

His understanding, worried brown eyes said _are you, though?_ “What if it was me?” he asked. “I did counselling at the VA. I don’t know if we ever talked about that.”

She didn’t know if they’d talked about it, but she’d known it from his file. “I trust you with my life,” Lucy said slowly, trying to figure out how to phrase this. “But I don’t trust you to be able to compartmentalise Sam the friend and teammate from Sam the therapist, because you’re human, too. When we’re in the field, you can’t be worried about something I told you in therapy, and I can't be sitting in therapy wondering if what I say is going to change how you treat me in the field.”

“We’ve got more personnel now. I could take myself out of the field.”

She considered it. “That might be a good idea. You know it's more dangerous for you, and you know that I hate that, but I know who you are, and it's your call. But I don't think it changes anything. You could tell me not to worry about putting you in an uncomfortable position with Steve, for example, but I can’t flip off that switch in my brain, Sam. Look, I – I know I’m not great. But I’m okay. I’m getting through it. I know I’ve made decisions that might be viewed as reckless-” She thought of the argument with Steve, of telling him that it might as well be her risking the speech. She thought about Journal-Lucy. She guessed that Curt knew, but she hadn’t told anyone except Frank about what her mother had told her. “But I’m not suicidal. I’m doing a dangerous, important job to the best of my ability. It might cost me my life, and I’m prepared for that. But I had a noose around my neck, and I wasn’t happy about it. I fought. And if things change and I’m having suicidal thoughts, I’ll tell you and we’ll re-evaluate, okay? I promise.” She hesitated. “Frank and I talked on mission and it was … helpful.”

“I’m glad. And you can talk to me as a friend, you know? I don’t have to be in therapist-mode.”

“I know. That means a lot.”

There was a knock on her door. “ _Drag Race_ starts in five,” Amy warned.

“Be right there,” Lucy called. “Are we good?”

“Always,” Sam confirmed.

* * *

Peggy, Clint and Coulson did most of Natasha’s debriefing, disappearing for hours at a time. She took up residence in one of the cells, while Frank and Curt had been released with the same tech-killing house arrest bracelets that Amy had worn. Amy was allowed to go without, though there were still codes in place at the doors to prevent her or the other kids from leaving without supervision. It made teaching a lot easier, and opened up options for her free time. Given that the other team’s tech guy was gone and all the doors, as well as the Lifeboat, were locked with tech, it was a pretty good way to make sure that Frank and Curt stayed put.

Lucy thought about what Sam had said, about not having to do things alone, and she tried to take it to heart. She made up a chore schedule instead of the haphazard system of cooking and cleaning which meant nothing was done as often as it should. Felicity took over the kids’ math education, Fitz and Simmons offered to take over the science, and Tripp offered to sit in as FitzSimmons-to-English translator. Steve taught art every few days, and Peggy taught self-defence on alternate days in addition to the tutoring she provided Lucy and Felicity every morning. Lucy added ASL and Russian on alternate days, and they had individual counselling sessions with either Curt or Sam once a week. Lucy continued to try to gameplan for HYDRA, though the Mothership remained parked in the present day. Fitz and Simmons were working on a way to track it. HYDRA could probably get it out before they could lock it down in whatever present day facility they worked out of, but if they were in the past the team might be able to steal it away and lock HYDRA out of the timeline.

In the present day, things had stabilised. HYDRA still controlled bases, and there was an ongoing diplomatic war as governments and law enforcement agencies fought over whether the real terrorists were HYDRA or SHIELD, aided by HYDRA agents and sympathisers embedded all over, but whatever agents needed rescue and whatever bases were vulnerable had been dealt with. It meant that SHIELD was trying to focus once more on its actual job in addition to their civil war, and sometimes Coulson’s team were called upon to lend their expertise, or go out on a rapid response call.

Partly for that reason, and partly for interpersonal ones, the teams remained somewhat split. They tended to socialise, train and eat as distinct units, though there were exceptions. Sam and Curt bonded over their shared experiences as veterans and counsellors of veterans and monitoring the mental health of the bunker occupants as a team. Tripp, Steve and Peggy bonded over Gabe, trading stories of the man they had all known. Felicity had already befriended Fitz, Simmons and Skye, working in the lab when she was coding for SHIELD in between jobs, and Clint got along with everyone. Frank remained something of a loner, and so Lucy generally partnered up with him herself. Steve still hated it and so did Coulson, when he was around, but Lucy was stubborn and their reactions only made her want to double down. Frank had pitched in with the dishes or the kids even before the schedule, and he was a much more competent cook that she was, no matter how many jokes about MREs Amy made, and even if he’d lost his daughter before she’d become a teenager, he was the only person in the bunker who’d been an active parent. And what if he was awake sometimes in the middle of the night because of nightmares? Lucy only knew that because so was she, but she hadn’t had a panic attack while conscious since talking to Sam. She felt good.

Coulson and Clint had taken the Quinjet and headed off to consult with Hill, including about Lucy’s suspicions about the metal arm that Natasha’s masked partner had. They’d removed Natasha from her previous trajectory twice now. HYDRA had recruited her from the Russian branch of whatever their older, secret parent organisation should have been called and taken her into the time travel side of things along with the man code-named Winter Soldier. Lucy still believed that the metal arm she’d read about on returning from the UN/Peggy mission had been delivered by Bill. Frank had confirmed that they all had their own gear and out of habit and trust hadn’t gone through each other’s. Natasha had described it as best she could, had said it was like nothing she had ever seen and that they’d told them the hand would be just as responsive to his thoughts as the one he was born with. It wasn’t Lucy’s field but she’d never even heard of that kind of tech, and hoped that it would be traceable to a manufacturer, so she was sort of loitering in the hanger waiting for them to land. Felicity was at the Lifeboat’s control console, tapping away at the computer trying to retrieve data that Fitz and Jemma hoped would help them to track the Mothership, and Lucy sat next to her with a book about the psychology of traumatised teens she had in the book jacket of _The Warmth of Other Suns_. Amy and Frank were over by the basketball hoop.

They were joined by most of the bunker’s residents when the jet finally did land. There wasn’t a lot going on in the bunker and everyone tended to drop what they were doing when something notable happened.

“I spoke to Hill,” Coulson said. “There’s a school in Westchester for special kids. The kind of special the twins and Peter are. I’m going to see if he’ll take Amy, too.”

“ _Nyet_ ,” Wanda said. Pietro put an arm around her, tensed like he was ready to bolt. His eyes were darting around. Hers were fixed on Lucy, and she looked terrified. “If you send us to Xavier we’ll escape and we’ll find Foggy!” she said. Red fire swirled around her fingertips, and Lucy knew she was dangerous even if she didn't mean her threat.

“What’s the matter with you, kid?” Clint demanded.

“Why don’t we all take a deep breath?” Sam suggested, hands raised to caution everyone.

Wanda’s eyes darted between the combat experts nervously, and Pietro bent his knees a little, ready to bolt.

“Wanda!” Lucy said urgently. The girl looked at her. Lucy had no idea what about this Xavier that sent her into a blind panic but she didn’t really care, and she tried to think that as loudly as possible. “One big sister to another, you get a pass. But if you ever threaten an innocent person again, you’ll be grounded until college. Understand?” Frank edged in front of Amy, weight on the balls of his feet. Ready to move, Lucy thought. Wanda glanced at him, then at Peter, protesting as Steve gripped him by the back of the shirt and pulled him behind himself and Peggy. The latter had a gun in her hand, though it was still lowered at her side. For all that Sam had his hands extended and his _let’s all be friends_ face on, he’d also stepped in front of Felicity. Clint had Coulson’s back like they’d done it a hundred times before. Tripp was herding the scientists and Skye away, and Curt was edging toward Lucy. Wanda looked back at Lucy. _They’ll take you over my dead body_ , she thought, and meant it down to her bones, surprising herself with the force of the feeling. Maybe it was just the gaping hole of Foggy’s presence in her life, but these kids were _hers_ and no one would take them against their will without a fight.

The girl sagged in relief, and Pietro relaxed his stance.

“Let’s get out of here,” Lucy suggested, throwing a look back over her shoulder at Coulson. They’d have to talk later about this Xavier.

The two teens turned for the door, Lucy just behind them and Amy and Peter falling in behind her.

“I’m twelve minutes older,” Pietro grumbled.

* * *

Lucy just wanted to sit down and have five minutes to herself. Was that really so much to ask? They’d had a week of time-travel free days of lessons and so she’d given the kids the day off, since they sort of just took ‘weekends’ when their teachers were away. But she couldn’t say no when Clint said he had an hour to train archery, or when Peggy said she and Natasha wanted to learn yoga together, or when Felicity said she was going to watch _Dark Matter_ with the other nerds and said it would really mean a lot to Skye if Lucy would join them. It was her night to cook – her night to chop and stir whatever Frank told her to – but Curt intercepted her on her way to the kitchen.

“Kids are helping anyway, it’s kind of crowded,” he said. “Frank’s fine. Sam and I want to talk to you about the twins, is now okay?”

“I guess,” she said, glancing at the kitchen.

“Frank said it was fine,” Curt said.

Lucy didn’t like ditching out on chores, not when she was the one to make the schedule and more often than not, enforce it, but if Frank said it was okay she supposed she ought to take him at his word. Sam and Curt didn’t seem prepared for their meeting, just telling Lucy things she already knew. The twins were guarded, and leery of the lab and medical procedures. They had permitted Simmons to do a general wellness check up when they’d first arrived but flatly refused to have blood drawn. Though Simmons could be a little tunnel vision about science, she was an empathetic person and hadn’t pushed it. Lucy suspected that they were taking turns sleeping and keeping watch in a single room, but she couldn’t blame them. Nobody had been able to tell her how long HYDRA had kept the twins, but they had definitely been the subject of some kind of experimentation. Aside from the incident in the hanger, they were responsive to Lucy’s teaching, polite to everyone, and they seemed to get along with Peter and Amy. It had actually been good for Peter and Amy’s relationship, as far as Lucy could see. Amy had gone from wary of Peter to protective, like she’d decided in the face of the very united front the twins presented that having a younger dork of a teammate was better than no teammate at all. Peter had been his usual sunny, outgoing self, and soon it seemed like every time Lucy surprised the four of them they stopped whispering as soon as she was in earshot. She didn’t mind. She wanted them to take advantage of whatever limited freedom could be found in the bunker, and if Amy had decided that Wanda and Pietro were also now under the protection of her acerbic tongue, all the better. They clearly felt safe with Clint, and they’d play cards with him and Natasha, who was a native Russian language speaker, too. It seemed to Lucy they were adjusting as well as anyone could ask.

It took nearly forty minutes of going in circles for Peter to knock on the door and tell them that dinner was ready.

“Is there anything else?” Lucy asked, trying to keep her tone polite.

“Nope, that’s it!” Sam said cheerfully. “Let’s go. You’re hungry, right?”

Lucy felt like everyone was staring at her as she walked into the dining room. And it was, for once, _everyone_ – they usually ate in shifts, or in different locations, everyone one on their own schedule and doing their own thing. Lucy made sure to eat with the kids whenever she was in the bunker, and Frank always joined them, but the rest was a rotating cast, with the food in the kitchen either kept warm or portioned out to be reheated. Today, two of the tables were all laid out.

“Is something going on?” she asked.

“Happy birthday!” Peter exclaimed.

Lucy looked over her shoulder at Sam, which made him laugh. “It’s my birthday? I – I didn’t even realise.”

“I know we can’t really do presents but there’s a cake for after,” Amy said. Her black shirt and skinny jeans were dusted with powdered sugar.

“You guys did this?” Lucy asked. She felt shy under the gaze of so many people, but slipped around the table and chairs. “Anyone want a hug?” she asked quietly. Peter stepped forward first, as she’d expected, then Amy.

Wanda hesitated. “Would that – be okay?”

“Of course,” Lucy said. She folded the girl into her arms. “Any time, okay?” she whispered, and felt Wanda nod.

Pietro swayed back on his heels. Lucy offered her fist and he bumped it with a smile.

“I’m with it, I know what the cool kids are into,” she joked.

Amy groaned and Peter audibly slapped himself in his rush to hide his face. Pietro rolled his eyes, but Wanda grinned.

“How are you worse than Frank?” Amy groaned.

Lucy looked for him and found him leaning in the doorway of the kitchen. “Thanks,” she mouthed. He shrugged one shoulder.

It wasn't the first time they'd made a point to celebrate a birthday or “Okay, you actually need to take the rest of your cake to go,” Amy declared. “We got you one more present. Well, mostly Felicity.”

“It was a team effort,” Felicity said, shaking her head. She handed over a tablet. “Might want to go to your room,” she said. “Call’s scheduled in about five minutes.

“Okay,” Lucy said slowly. “Um, thank you all again, and I guess I'll see you later.”

Lucy wasn’t used to the prospect of seeing her brother being a source of nerves. She frantically cleaned the limited mess in her bare room, then winced at how institutional and sad it looked and scattered her sweater and books around again.

The tablet started beeping the video call alert, and she sat and put it on its stand, running a hand over her hair one last time. Her bruises were gone. Did she look healthy? Pale, probably, but she couldn’t much help that.

She clicked “accept” and Foggy popped up on screen. Although she hadn’t seen his new apartment, she knew immediately he wasn’t at home – some kind of SHIELD approved office, she supposed. She waved nervously, and his face crumpled.

“I hate fighting,” He said. “I’m sorry, Luce.”

“Me too,” she said immediately. “I would have been going nuts in your position. I should have made more effort.”

“I would have wanted to tell my story in my own time if I were you,” Foggy said. “I should have been more patient.”

“I think I’m ready now, if you still want to hear it,” Lucy said. She still skimmed over the things Grant had done and said a bit, but she briefly summarised her injuries and what had happened.

“You’re better now?” Foggy asked. “You look good. You don’t look like you’ve lost weight.”

Lucy hadn’t even thought of that, but- “No,” she agreed. “My jeans fit fine. I guess – well, Frank and I usually eat with the kids, so that keeps me accountable.”

“So you adopted a dog together, you’re co-parenting a small herd of teenagers – anything I should know about Frank?” Foggy teased.

 _It’s not like that,_ Lucy meant to say, relieved that Foggy wasn’t mad at her about being friendly with his one-time kidnapper. “He’s married.”

“He’s widowed,” Foggy said gently.

“Not really. Not in his mind. I think it would be more like cheating on deployment than moving on from a loss. This isn’t like Steve and Peggy, or me and Grant. He’s convinced he’ll get her back. He’s changed the timeline to get her back. And future-past Lucy did, too.”

“Is that the truth, or is it an excuse?” he asked, still gentle.

She looked down and picked at the fraying threads of a hole in her jeans. “I don’t know, Foggy. Maybe both. I’m not – I was never brave like you are.”

“What do you mean? You’re flying through time fighting future Nazis and Communist assassins. I’m a first-year lawyer.”

“You follow your heart,” Lucy said. “You always did. You – you grew your hair, you chose your own path, you loved Matt so selflessly that even I wasn’t sure you wanted more than friendship from him.”

“And where do you think I get that from?” he gestured at her through the screen.

Lucy laughed.

“I’m serious,” Foggy protested. “Look, maybe you wanted to be who Mom and Dad wanted you to be, but I didn’t. I could ignore Dad telling me I wasn’t tough enough and Mom saying I wasn’t smart enough and kids at school saying I wasn’t skinny enough because you were the toughest, smartest, prettiest person I knew, and I wanted to be who you wanted me to be. And you wanted me to be happy. You told me that I was enough.”

“Foggy,” Lucy croaked, holding back tears.

“And I know I’ll always be your baby brother, but sometimes I wish I could just be your brother so I could be that person for you.”

Lucy had to hide her face and take a couple of shaky breaths before she could look back at the tablet and nod, wiping tears away. “I’ll try.”

"It always kind of felt like you were treading water, waiting for something. I didn't know how to be that, or fix that."

Lucy thought back on her life before time travel, the normalcy feeling utterly foreign. Even when she'd thought she was in love, she'd never quite felt like she fit into her life. Maybe that had something to do with the manipulations of the HYDRA of previous timelines and maybe it was just her. "You're not wrong, but it wasn't your job to fix it. I'm sorry you felt that way."

"I just want you to be happy."

"I don't know if happy is the right word, but I feel more myself doing this than I ever have," she confessed. She didn't know what that said about her, that her life made more sense when she was regularly terrified, but it was the truth.

He nodded, then looked past the tablet. “They say we have to wrap it up,” he said apologetically.

“Okay. I’m really glad we got to talk. It was so good to see you, and I’ll think about what you said, okay?”

“Be safe,” Foggy said. “Tell Frank thank you from me.”

“Yeah, okay,” Lucy said, rolling her eyes. Best behaviour since his talk with Sam or not, Steve’s head would explode if she admitted that she and Foggy had discussed Frank. “I love you. Love to Matt, and be careful.”

“Love you, too,” Foggy said, and with a final wave, the feed cut out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not entirely happy with this and it felt a little short, but distinct from what comes before and after, so we'll get back into the action next week.
> 
> I am still not caught up on WandaVision, and all of this was written before it started, so I was working with somewhat limited characterisations for the twins. I know that in the comics they are Magneto's kids, grandkids here. He and Professer Xavier are sort-of enemies, and while Professer X would never hurt the twins, HYDRA had a lot of time and incentive to convince them that he would.
> 
> I don't actually read the comics and I struggled with Pietro in particular. The "see that coming" runner with Clint in Ultron felt very performatively masculine and I just couldn't conceive of him relating to Lucy in that kind of way. Wanda tends to boss him around, although he seems more emotional where she's more task oriented, and I felt like him being a people-centric introvert balanced the kids the best so I went with that. (I personality type characters when I'm having trouble with them, for me it helps me think about them in new ways. Amy's a task-centred extrovert, Peter a people-centred extrovert, Wanda a task-centred introvert).


End file.
